New Year’s Eve airplanes have started to get angry Business and Economic News

More than 1,300 flights were canceled in the United States on Friday and 1,001 were cleared on Saturday.

New Year’s Eve air travel began hard on Friday morning, with more than 1,300 flights canceled in the U.S. and 1,000 cleared on Saturday.

JetBlue Airways Corp crashed 145 flights, or 14% of its schedule for 12:17 in New York, according to FlightAware.com, while Allegiant Travel Co. canceled 91 flights, or 19%. United Airlines Holdings Inc. had the highest number of flights flown by U.S. carriers, 210, 11% of its service.

A total of 1,359 were canceled on Friday, and 1,001 already by Saturday. The pace of cancellations slowed significantly from noon onwards, as did Thursday.

Carriers have struggled with staff shortages because the omicron coronavirus variant has jumped infections. The New York City area, when the variant made its initial foray into the U.S., has been suspended for the past two days.

“You have a high level of vaccination among airline employees, and yet because of the omicron, I think absenteeism is higher than you would expect,” Savanthi Syth analyst Raymond James told Bloomberg Television. The company was caught unawares “at a time when you also had some winter weather problems in the US”

Air travel in the U.S. is double the level of last year before it became safer for vaccines to fly. The Transportation Security Administration examined 2.05 million passengers on Thursday.

The National Weather Service has warned that severe conditions will lead to the New Year, with moderate to heavy snowfall expected in the western mountains. Totals can exceed 3 feet at the highest elevations in Utah and Colorado. Dangerous travel conditions are forecast for New Year’s Day from the Central Plains to the Great Lakes.

Not all carriers were hit hard on Friday. Delta Air Lines Inc. reduced flights by 5% by noon, and American Airlines Group Inc. by 1%, according to FlightAwar.

Flying this weekend? There’s a lot going on in the sky that can affect your travel plans.
-Heavy vacation trips
-Weather throughout the country
-And Omicron
Check with the airline to find out the flight status before going to the airport. Check the airport status address https://t.co/smgdqJN3td. #FlySmart pic.twitter.com/Ac4hUIxrdA

– FAA @ (@FAANews) December 30, 2021

Restrictions on the case have also slowed down global travel forecasts. Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. has nearly halved the number of flights to Hong Kong from China next month. British Airways plans to cancel flights to the territory until March.

The impact looks set to continue well into the new year. Airlines around the world have canceled about 8.4% of their scheduled flights for January in the last four weeks, according to BloombergNEF data, which monitors aircraft fuel demand.

The drop is even more severe in Europe, with 15% of flights canceled in January as some countries try to halt the spread of omicron after new restrictions on cross-border travel.