Airline pilots walk through the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Airline investors appeared to ignore the thousands of canceled flights over the holidays.
More than 5,400 flights were canceled over the weekend due to severe winter weather that hobbled some of the country's busiest airports. There were about 250 flight cancelations on Tuesday.
Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and JetBlue Airways said that their crews were sick from the fast-spreading omicron variant of Covid. The FAA warned about delays as its staff became positive for the coronaviruses.
Crew members are getting extra pay to pick up trips at some airlines.
More than 13,700 flights were canceled from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day, or 5.6% of schedules. The winter storm hit the Midwest on Saturday, and that spiked that to more than 12% of flights.
Airline shares were higher in premarket trading, a sign that investors are looking ahead to the rest of the year, when travel demand is expected to rise.
The cost of the disruptions is not yet known. The holiday period was important for carriers because they expected some of the busiest days since the Pandemic began.
Stephen Trent wrote on Monday that the variant could present a "modest, near-term risk" for airlines due to staff infections and the potential that some customers delay trips.
Higher vaccination rates and emerging anti-viral treatments are just some of the factors that could make negative, knee-jerk stock price reactions to the emergence of future variants look increasingly unreasonable.
American, United and Alaska were up close to 1%. Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds of flights over the weekend.
The sector will have its quarterly earnings reports on January 13th.
