4,346 Flights Cancelled on New Year's Day (nbcnews.com) 72
4,346 flights were cancelled worldwide by this morning, including 2,508 in the U.S. Airlines have been blaming cancellations on increasing Covid-19 infections among flightcrews creating staffing shortages, the Associated Press reports.
"More than 12,000 U.S. flights have been canceled since December 24..." Saturday's disruptions weren't just due to the virus, however. Wintry weather made Chicago the worst place in the country for travelers, with 800 flights scrubbed at O'Hare Airport and more than 250 at Midway Airport. Forecasts called for nine inches of snow...
Among international carriers, China Eastern scrubbed more than 500 flights, or about one-fourth of its total, and Air China canceled more than 200 flights, one-fifth of its schedule, according to FlightAware.
"The nationwide spike in Omicron cases has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation," United Airlines told Forbes — as they cancelled 221 flights on Saturday.
Forbes adds that Omicron "has continued to spread at an alarming rate across the U.S., with over 585,000 reported new cases on December 30 — a new record-high, according to the New York Times' tracking data."
"More than 12,000 U.S. flights have been canceled since December 24..." Saturday's disruptions weren't just due to the virus, however. Wintry weather made Chicago the worst place in the country for travelers, with 800 flights scrubbed at O'Hare Airport and more than 250 at Midway Airport. Forecasts called for nine inches of snow...
Among international carriers, China Eastern scrubbed more than 500 flights, or about one-fourth of its total, and Air China canceled more than 200 flights, one-fifth of its schedule, according to FlightAware.
"The nationwide spike in Omicron cases has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation," United Airlines told Forbes — as they cancelled 221 flights on Saturday.
Forbes adds that Omicron "has continued to spread at an alarming rate across the U.S., with over 585,000 reported new cases on December 30 — a new record-high, according to the New York Times' tracking data."
Re:4346 flights? (Score:5, Funny)
That's a suspiciously specific number.
Yes. Deeply suspicious. It's almost as if they went out and counted them instead of guessing randomly based on speculation on Twitter. Burn the heretics.
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That's a suspiciously specific number.
Yes. Deeply suspicious. It's almost as if they went out and counted them instead of guessing randomly based on speculation on Twitter. Burn the heretics.
Flight cancellations are a reportable event. Also Wall Street uses completion rate as one of the metrics that affects the valuation of an airline's stock price. So yes, they're tracked by many people, not just the FAA.
What a great way to suicide your business. (Score:2)
Re: What a great way to suicide your business. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: What a great way to suicide your business. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, they laid off a huge part of their workforce last year and were scrambling to get them all back.
You mean all that money taxpayers gave them didn't go toward retaining employees but instead went to executive salaries, bonuses, and stock buybacks [nytimes.com]?
I'm shocked!
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If I were a cabin attendant, or a pilot/flight engineer I'd have been looking to change careers. Aside from the layoffs being inevitable, going back to being stuck in an enclosed space with a bunch of anti-vaxxers and people who bought vaccination certificates off the internet, not to mention the ones who are vaccinated but still contagious.
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There is only a few options when you need to fly (or just one choice if you are not in a major city). And prices can be nearly the same when competing flights are available.
It feels fine (Score:2)
This is why we traditionally regulate things like airlines and transportation in general as more or less public utilities. It's also why we used to heavily enforce antitrust laws. We stopped doing all that and so they stopped caring. You think on slashdot where all thos
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There is competition, just not in the mass market. There is also innovation among the smaller airlines in how they target specific segements of the population. The major carriers also have to deal with competition in the onboard product, schedule, and route map.
I don’t think regulation is the answer, and from personal experience a big part of the mergers is simply the challenges of providing nation-wide service in the US.
The current problem was easily anticipated— when 5% of your workforce bei
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OTOH, this may spread as more people need to take time off due to Omicron, which still hits like a bad cold, average flu for many, as well as health orders to isolate for 5-7 days if sick.
Truck drivers, grocery workers, was going to list warehouse workers but I doubt they're allowed sick leave, same with delivery workers. Things like fire fighters, police, medical workers etc.
While Omicron seems mild, if everyone gets sick and 20%+ need to take time off, things can still be bad for a while.
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Give me the
number of mergers there's been in the airline industry and the extreme cost of trying to enter that industry they don't really have any competition.
People like to complain about "lack of competition" but there's no denying that airline profit margins are razor-thin and inflation-adjusted airfares are incredibly low compared to past years, even post-deregulation airfares.
When my buddy and I graduated university in 1990 we went backpacking in Europe. Our return el-cheapo "student" fares were
Christmas and New Years? (Score:3, Insightful)
The two biggest spikes in cancellations were due to union employees not wanting to work... I mean calling in sick on two of the biggest holidays of the year. Let me guess, cancellations will magically go back to near normal on Tuesday Jan 4th.
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Cancelled flights have been in the thousands ever since mid-November.
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That isn’t really how it works or what happened here. The bulk of the issue starts from the isolation requirements when someone tests positive; one flight attendant being out sick (once you use up all your reserves) results in up to 6 cancellations per day for 10 (now 5) days. When you have >0.1% of the US population testing positive per day you are obviously going to have some significant impacts.
I am curious why the airlines didn’t have a better playback for this situation, although I thi
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The airlines could have offered more money to work those days, and got more reserves in place. They could have reduced the number of bookings for those days, knowing that cancellations were likely (since if it is hangover related, it presumably happens every year).
But no, they let people book and then get screwed. The usual airline behaviour.
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One would only have to look at cancellation numbers for previous years to see why this is a news story.
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I highly doubt it's because they didn't want to work or we'd have seen this happen on all the Christmases and NYE's before.
What I heard was after the airlines laid off tons of employees, they've basically exhausted the OT for remaning employees. Not exactly because of COVID, more like their policy in keeping up profits during COVID.
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Let me guess, cancellations will magically go back to near normal on Tuesday Jan 4th.
There's a big snow storm over Chicago right now, this is causing flights to be cancelled at ORD and many other airports in the region. Weekends and New Year Day are big for pleasure travel, and New Year Day landing on the weekend makes that worse. Then we have a novel flu virus, meaning people that would normally go to work would volunteer to stay home or be forced to stay home by policy. It's a perfect storm for flight cancellations on top of many people flying. By January 4th the storm will be over, r
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COVID is not a flu.
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COVID is not a flu.
Then what is it?
If COVID-19 not a kind of influenza then it is a kind of cold. This isn't anything so far from a flu or cold that we can't call it one or the other. If COVID-19 isn't a flu then nothing is. We'd be splitting that definition so thin that we'd find a reason for every virus to fall outside what we call a flu.
COVID-19 is a viral infection with flu-like symptoms. Isn't that right? We call viral infections with flu-like symptoms a flu. If it takes a DNA test, or whatever, to separate COVID-1
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COVID-19 is a cold.
"The Flu" is caused by the influenza virus. All the flus are named with the HxNy nomenclature which details which are the major proteins on the outside shell of the virus. You might reme
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COVID-19 is a kind of SARS.
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COVID-19 is a kind of SARS.
And WTF is SARS?
SARS is how we describe a severe cold. COVID-19 is a cold, not a common cold, a novel cold. After people build up immunity, after is it not so novel, then it will be a common cold.
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Do I have to teach you how to use wikipedia before you stop asking stupid questions and quit spreading untruths or can you manage to learn to use it by yourself?
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Why ask me such questions when other people made the same claims before I did in this thread? I'm not the only one calling COVID-19 a cold, go tell the others they need to read Wikipedia too.
Re:Time was (Score:5, Informative)
Yeh, its much better if they turn up anyway and pass on their infections to others, especially doctors. Moron.
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Much better to have food shortages and no guarantee the lights will come on when you flick a switch?
I bet you that there were medical supplies riding in the cargo holds of those cancelled flights that won't get where they need to in a timely manner because stamping out something approaching the severity of the common cold is a bigger priority than doing your fucking job.
I'm not seeing any cargo carries listed. I doubt your ivermectin is shipped via Southwest or Delta. https://flightaware.com/live/c... [flightaware.com]
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wouldn't call in sick over a case of the sniffles or a sore throat
Overuse of sick days for minor ailments that did not interfere with job performance was distinctly frowned upon
I bet you that there were medical supplies riding in the cargo holds of those cancelled flights
You're just pulling shit out you ass guessing at things here. Nothing you've said has any evidence of being factual. Provide one link that proves literally any of what you've said.
I miss those days
Well then people should pay for that mentally to come back. As it is, a lot of those industries pay shit.
because stamping out something approaching the severity of the common cold is a bigger priority than doing your fucking job
If I'm being paid shit wages, then yeah. Want loyalty? Pay for it! A quick peek at Indeed shows flight attendants average wage at $32,039. So yes, for that rate, if my nose itches and it's going to be a shitty time of th
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Yeh, its much better if they turn up anyway and pass on their infections to others, especially doctors. Moron.
If I am only being paid to work, and not to take a sick day off, then I am working.
Alternatively, each vaccination costs money, so why aren't individuals required to pay the full cost?
Re:Time was (Score:5, Insightful)
flight attendants, grocery clerks, doctors, anyone who held the dignity and responsibility of reporting to work in exchange for currency wouldn't call in sick over a case of the sniffles or a sore throat.
Overuse of sick days for minor ailments that did not interfere with job performance was distinctly frowned upon.
I miss those days.
Time was also when employees were viewed as people instead of just numbers. When companies were loyal to their employees in order to generate loyalty back to the company.
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But neither does making sick employees come in and infect their coworkers because they're "brave"
Re: Time was (Score:1)
Covid does not kill the vaccinated any more than flu or the common cold does.
It is no longer appropriate to act as if it does.
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And I do know that prolonging this nonsense by pretending to worry about covid safety when it's little more than the common cold for anyone doing any worrying is pointless, costly, and objectively stupid.
Ya know, every time you make this claim you get punched upside the head and shown for the liar you are. But then, being right wing, lying is what you do best.
Kindly let us know when the common cold [factcheck.org] kills over 800,000 people in less than two years in the U.S. Even back in 2020, this lie was shot down [reuters.com].
Re: Time was (Score:1)
Have you gotten your shots?
If so, you no longer live in 2020.
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Well, once 1/3rd of the US mans the fuck up and decides to get their shots, we can maybe have that discussion.
The rate of vaccinations in the USA for the entire population is over 60%. In the population of people over 65 years of age (or whatever line one desires to draw for "high risk") has vaccination rates so close to 100% that it may as well be 100%. People too young for a vaccine, and these people are at such low risk for death or injury from COVID-19 that the risk is effectively zero, make up something like 20% of the population. Add those two up and we have 20% + 60% = 80%. Then we have people that did n
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Apparently high enough considering almost as many people die daily as during the very first wave - despite better protocols, over 60% vaccination and the most vulnerable already have been culled during the first two waves. But denial is not just a river in Egypt, I guess.
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If the rate of deaths before we had vaccines, mask mandates, and improved treatment protocols is the rate of deaths we see after vaccines, mask mandates, and improved treatment protocols then nothing has been effective in slowing the spread of the disease. Why the fuck would anyone get vaccinated if after 60% of the population is vaccinated we see no benefit? How the fuck are these people still being infected? The answer must be that masked and vaccinated people are still spreading the disease.
Who is sti
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Because the virus gets more dangerous with each mutation that is allowed to spread and sick people are breeding tanks for these mutations, you moron.
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I don't recall the flu or the common cold killing over 800,000 people in the USA since March 2020. Covid, on the other hand, has done exactly that.
It's no longer appropriate to act as if covid and the flu are the same.
Context matters more than numbers (Score:2)
Re:Context matters more than numbers (Score:5, Informative)
It's a significant number of cancellations, particularly for a holiday. The FAA handles about 27,000 passenger flights daily, so that's a ~16% cancellation rate.
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I saw numbers with a denominator but only for some airlines. Several had to cancel a fifth or even a quarter of their flights. Presumably less for the ones that didn't get written about.
Amtrak is having some cancellations too, but the number I think I remember is only 1.5%.
https://wapo.st/3eJgR7c [wapo.st]
We live in the dark ages (Score:1)
We live in the dark ages of disinformation and this story is proof. When airline personnel who have no symptoms and no more chance of getting sick than getting polio, because they are vaccinated and bostered, are told to stay home because they might infect someone who refuses to be vaccinated. We live in the dark ages of disinformation thanks to people who know so little about scientific methodology they cannot discern research from facebook, fox, twitter or youtube. We live in the dark ages of disinform
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Crew members who test positive for COVID but are fully vaccinated and boostered are unlikely to feel sick. As such they present no risk to other fully vaccinated and boostered crew members or passengers. That's the nature of COVID immunization as shown by research on large populations from the CDC, Israel, Singapore and elsewhere. Being fully vaccinated reduces the risk of illness, hospitalization or death to less than that of the annual asian flu. Even though this is Epidemiology 101 media outlets (wit
Nonessential entertainment canceled, so what? (Score:2)
Stop wanting nonessential travel. Yes, really. Fun is fun but not a survival need and the whole point of New Years travel is going someplace different to get intoxicated.
New Years celebrations are trifles. I ignore them and my life is no worse for it.