At Christmas of all times, many passengers were unable to take the flight they had booked. So far, more than 4,500 flights have been canceled worldwide over the festive season. The USA is hardest hit: According to the flightaware.com website, over a thousand planes remained on the ground on Friday and Saturday. The airlines United and Delta are particularly affected.
According to the airlines, the many flight cancellations are due to the fact that many pilots, flight attendants and other employees are infected with the corona virus or are under quarantine.
The German Lufthansa had to cancel a dozen flights due to failures over Christmas. In addition, the group announced that it would significantly reduce its program in the new year due to a lack of demand.
In Lufthansa’s winter flight schedule, every tenth flight planned is said to be canceled. A total of 33,000 connections will be deleted, as CEO Carsten Spohr announced in an interview.
Buffer is insufficient
Regarding the illness-related failures over the holidays, a company spokesman said: “We have planned with a very large buffer. But that’s not enough for the extremely high sickness rate. ” He did not want to speculate about a connection with the highly contagious Corona variant Omikron, since Lufthansa was not informed about the type of diseases.
The subsidiary Swiss is not affected by the Christmas breakdown. “Currently we have no shortages in the flying staff,” said a Swiss spokesman on Sunday view. However, a pandemic is characterized by high volatility. “We are basically planning more reserves for weekends due to higher production,” the spokesman continued.
For the entire winter flight schedule from the end of October to the end of March, however, the airline is expecting cancellations of around eight percent due to “restrictions and demand”: “This corresponds to a total of around 2900 flights, of which 1200 flights have already been canceled in the past few weeks.” The flight cancellations would mainly affect the travel period from mid-January to the end of March 2022.
“The passengers will be informed.”
This “conservative deletion” corresponds to a total of almost nine percent of the 33,000 flights that the parent company Lufthansa Group has to cancel in the winter flight schedule. A disproportionately low figure: Swiss’s share of capacity within the Lufthansa Group is around 15 percent.
When it comes to customers’ addresses, the company says: “Passengers will be informed accordingly and alternatives will be offered.”