Christmas and New Year travel woes continue around the world

Worldwide, the travel misery lingers with Christmas in the rear view mirror but the new year holiday ahead.

Another 1,300+ flights have been cancelled for Monday – Chinese and US destinations are the worst affected, according to FlightAware.

The majority of the flights cancelled in China include 366 flights by China Eastern and another 127 from Air China. The most affected destination or origin airports are in Beijing and Shanghai.

More than 7,300 flights were delayed or canceled across the US, alone, yesterday. Both the US-based Delta and US Airlines report that the disruption is due to crews testing positive, being too sick to work or just isolating.

In the UK, British Airways has cancelled 42 flights today. London’s Heathrow airport has listed 46 flights which won’t be arriving today.

Regionally, Hong Kong has banned all South Korea’s Korean Air flights for two weeks, after positive cases among some arrivals. South Korea has seen an uptick in new cases with 5,418 new infections reported in the past 24 hours.

Since Christmas Eve, more than 8,000 flights have been grounded across the world. In reality, the number of cancelled flights is not significant, but has caused a lot of misery to tens of thousands of people trying to get home or travel over the Christmas break.

Getting on ship and cruising your troubles away isn’t working either. US quarantine authorities are monitoring dozens of cruise ships hit by multiple Covid cases while sailing around US waters, many of them already denied port in the Caribbean and US ports.

Despite early findings that Omicron is less severe than earlier Covid-19 variants, scientists remain concerned by the sheer number of infections being recorded and that, statistically, hospitals could end up overwhelmed if the surges continue to mount up around the world.

SOURCE: BBC