Flight Delays and Cancellations To Last Through New Year

Above, an AMTRAK train arrives at Gallup Station. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

My decision to just stay home this holiday season kept me from the horrors of the mass flight cancellations and not driving the RV anywhere saved me some money since I had car repair expenses this month.

If people think that air travel is going to return to normal anytime soon, they're sadly mistaken. 

The chaos will continue through the New Year according to TravelPulse:

It was almost a week ago when a couple of airlines started reporting a handful of flight delays and cancellations – which quickly snowballed into a nightmare for people traveling to family and friends and warmer climates for the Christmas holiday.

And if you thought it was over, think again.

Because that was the last week; now they all must come home, and it’s not going to get any better.

“I don’t think it’s going to go away just because we’re turning the page to 2022,” Sheila Kahyaoglu, an aerospace and defense airlines equity research analyst at Jefferies, said on CNBC. “This could stick around for a few weeks.”

According to the New York Times, as of Noon today, Wednesday, December 29, another 840 flights just in the U.S. have been canceled due in small part to weather and in large part to Omicron, which has forced already-depleted airline staffers to call in sick.

Worldwide, more than 10,000 flights have been canceled since Christmas Eve according to data from FlightAware.com, a flight tracking service.

The only real viable alternative to getting from Point A to Point B appears to be by train. I haven't heard of any problems this season with AMTRAK. I wonder if any of the stranded yo-yos even considered train travel.

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