What's flying like today? (Experiences/news)

[MacMadame]

Now that summer is around the bend, there are a lot of articles about traveling and how to make it safe. Here is one. I find it somewhat paranoid in that they don't distinguish between the vaccinated and unvaccinated for most of the advice.

How to fly safely this summer

How safe is it to travel this summer? That depends on your vaccination status, your destination and your overall health and risk level if you were to be exposed to Covid-19.

www.mercurynews.com

 

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Between United and Delta over 200 flights have been cancelled for Christmas Eve, thanks to Omicron and weather issues.

The transportation industry has been bracing for pre-pandemic-level crowds this holiday season, but now two major U.S. airlines have been forced to proactively cancel some Christmas Eve flights due to the fast-spreading omicron variant of COVID-19.

As of Thursday evening, United Airlines has proactively cancelled 112 flights for Christmas Eve.

"The nationwide spike in omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation," United said in a statement. "As a result, we've unfortunately had to cancel some flights and are notifying impacted customers in advance of them coming to the airport."

"We're sorry for the disruption and are working hard to rebook as many people as possible and get them on their way for the holidays," the airline added.

And it's not just United that's feeling the impact of the variant on crews.

Delta Air Lines also proactively canceled around 90 flights for Christmas Eve. The airline says the "flight cancellations are due to a combination of issues, including but not limited to, potential inclement weather in some areas and the impact of the omicron variant."

 

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I love this story mostly because I wasn't anywhere near this flight.

A New Year’s Eve flight out of Calgary headed for Frankfurt, Germany was held up for several hours last night due to a disturbance that saw the Russian and Czech World Junior hockey teams booted from the plane.

“Two hours late so far on Calgary to Frankfurt flight. The Russian Juniors team was in back, trying to smoke cigarettes, not wearing masks, not listening to attendants,” wrote a Twitter user by the name of Dr. Kathleen Scherf.

“Cops swarmed the plane. We all had to get off while they and their luggage were removed.”

 

[annie720]

The last of my 3 kids made it back to their home airport today after flying to Denver to spend a week with us for the holidays. They came from Los Angeles, Baltimore, and upstate NY and all made it fine out here with no cancelations and limited delays. My son had no issues returning to NY on United on a 9 a.m. flight, daughter had a Southwest Chicago=> Baltimore leg canceled the night before but she was able to rebook on an earlier flight that departed before the snowstorm hit today. The worst experience was with my son's 90-minute return flight to Burbank on Southwest. A 2.5-hr delay in the terminal, boarded, then a 2-hr delay for a broken plane, fixed, then had to change crew due to too many hours, and finally, it was raining so hard in Burbank that they couldn't land and had to do the circling around thing. 4 a.m. arrival. This really went much better than I expected and so far nobody has tested positive!