Travelers wait in line to check in for their flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey.
The airlines canceled hundreds of flights on Tuesday due to the winter storms and the fast-spreading Covid omicron variant.
1,200 flights were canceled in the U.S. as of 11:00 a.m. Airlines have scrubbed more than 19,000 flights since Christmas Eve, disrupting holiday plans for tens of thousands of customers, as the busiest travel days of the year approach.
After a weekend of disruptions in the Midwest, 3,225 were canceled on Monday as a winter storm hit the mid-Atlantic. It was the largest day since Feb. 15 of last year, when 3,899 flights were canceled.
Southwest Airlines canceled 314 flights on Tuesday. The airline had to scale back operations at major airports because of bad weather. An airline spokeswoman said the carrier was working to get planes and flight crews back in place to resume some flights.
The airline canceled over 100 flights on Tuesday. The majority of the canceled flights were due to schedule cuts it announced last week to help ease staffing constraints as sideline flight crews. The New York-based airline is cutting flights.
Crew members of airlines were offered extra pay to pick up open trips. The company and the pilots union agreed to triple pay to fly extra trips.
Airline investors have not been affected by the disruptions. Many customers skipped trans-Atlantic trips during the H1N1 epidemic because of travel restrictions, but analysts expect a rebound in demand this year.
Carriers have struggled to increase their networks to match travel demand.
In a Tuesday note, Helane Becker, an airline analyst at Cowen, said that they believe that the year of 2022, will be another year of lumpy results as airlines continue to struggle to add capacity to their networks as demand is likely to remain strong. We expect ticket prices to go up because of inflationary pressure on fuel and labor costs.
Major US airlines were trading slightly higher on Tuesday morning. Southwest, American and United were all around 1%. Delta was higher.
