Trouble persists at US airports: Over 90 flights canceled at LAX
LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- More flights were canceled at Southland airports and around the world, as a wave of holiday week cancellations driven by the coronavirus pandemic continued to inconvenience travelers.
As of 11:30 a.m., the tracking site FlightAware.com listed 94 cancellations Monday for flights in or out of Los Angeles International Airport, along with 1,080 involving flights into or out of the United States, and 2,726 total cancellations around the world.
Sixteen cancellations were listed Monday at Orange County's John Wayne Airport.
There were 96 cancellations at LAX on Christmas Day, according to Flight Aware -- part of 997 total cancellations involving U.S. flights, and 2,858 worldwide.
On Friday, 2,380 flights were canceled worldwide -- 690 involving U.S. flights and 86 at LAX.
The scrapped flights were largely blamed on airline staffing shortages caused by the latest surge in coronavirus cases, fueled by the Omicron variant. Weather issues were also causing some of the cancellations.
After acknowledging the cancellations Friday, LAX did not comment on Saturday or Sunday's cancellations, but did tweet Sunday morning that "Today is expected to be another peak travel day at #LAX with up to 200,000 passengers using the airport! Make sure to arrive early for your flight, pre-book parking
at http://parking.flylax.com, and please wear your mask - wishing everyone #HealthyHolidays #LAXTravelSafely.''
The airport dealt with a separate, storm-related electrical issue affecting Terminal 5 on Sunday, and said passengers using American Airlines, JetBlue or Spirit were directed to use security checkpoints and baggage claims in Terminals 4 and 6.
