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.

To read more, go here. 

Cheap Flights To Hawaii Now Available

Above, an evening view of Diamond Head. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Kilauea may be erupting, but that is only affecting a small area of the Big Island of Hawaii. Some people got the impression that the eruptions are affecting all of Hawaii. Not so.

Now is the time to take advantage of some cheap flights to Hawaii.

According to Travel + Leisure:

Flights to Hawaii are more reasonable than ever, making that island vacation one step closer to reality. 

Scott's Cheap Flights spotted round-trip fares from major airports across the U.S. starting at $374. Some of the cheapest flights are available on American Airlines from Atlanta, Denver, Salt Lake City, Houston, Detroit, and Minneapolis. 

Travelers should check their preferred search engine, like Google Flights, to see what is available from their home airport on different travel dates.

To read more, go here. 

"Lincoln" and "Flight" Mini-reviews

Yesterday, I watched two good movies via "award screener" DVDs.

The first was Steven Spielberg's Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis in the title role.  The movie focuses on the final months of President Abraham Lincoln's life and the end of the Civil War.

The movie was well done and Lewis was probably the best movie Lincoln ever and Sally Field was great as Mary Todd Lincoln.

I am disappointed at how the assassination at Ford's Theater was glossed over.  Every Lincoln movie I've seen (dating back to D. W. Griffith's 1930 Abraham Lincoln) re-enacted the assassination.  This movie didn't.  They did depict Lincoln's moment of death in the rooming house across the street from Ford's.  The room was bigger than the actual one (I should know, I've been in it.)

Other than those quibbles, it was a fine movie.  If one is not into political history, they may find the movie long and boring.  There is one other actor who is in the movie who once also played Lincoln.

My grade: A.

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The second movie I watched was Flight, starring Denzel Washington.

Washington plays an heroic airline pilot but his alcoholism causes him trouble when federal investigators look into the circumstances surrounding the crash of the plane he was piloting.

Flight is a riveting movie and Washington's portrayal of an heroic, but flawed pilot was excellent.  Nadine Velazquez provides some eye-candy early on in the movie.

My grade: A+.