Flight cancellations continue to trouble U.S. and Canadian travelers today, but it’s not as bad as yesterday.
As of 1 p.m. Eastern Time today (January 4), flightaware.com reports there have been 3,482 cancellations around the world today. For flights within, to or from the U.S., that figure was at 1,367. That’s a lot, but it’s a little better than the 5,023 cancellations for all day yesterday around the world and the 3,226 cancellations for the U.S.
Fliers in Canada continue to have problems with cancellations. Flight Aware says 18% of Air Canada Jazz flights have been cancelled so far today, 90 flights in all. WestJet also has 18% of its flights cancelled, or 46 in total.
WestJet Encore was seeing a 14% cancellation rate, while Air Canada Rouge was at 9%, Porter Airlines at 5% and Air Canada’s main line at 7%.
The situation was a little better for major carries in the U.S., where Southwest was seeing a 12% flight cancellation rate and Jet Blue 10%.
Weather on the East Coast on Monday caused many flight cancellations out of Washington Reagan and Baltimore-Washington airports. Those are functioning much more smoothly today.
Staffing shortages due to COVID-19 and the Omicron variant also are causing problems for airlines.
