Things have been mostly good this year for travelers flying before and on Christmas, but some nasty glitches have once again plagued those flying Southwest Airlines.
For the millions of people traveling over the holidays, this year is much better than last year. Christmas morning set the stage for a relatively uneventful weekend.
By midday Monday, only 138 flights in, in or out of the US had been canceled and 1,366 had been delayed, according to tracking website FlightAware.
For this holiday season, US airlines are preparing for a huge wave of travelers by hiring thousands of pilots, flight attendants and other workers — in an effort to avoid delays and cancellations that hurt travel in 2022, culminating in the Southwest Airlines disaster that stranded more than 2 million people.
Still, Southwest experienced another outage over the weekend that the airline is looking to resolve by Monday. Only 2% of the airline’s flights were canceled on Monday, although 12% were delayed, a total of 524 flights, according to FlightAware.
On Saturday and Sunday, Southwest canceled 426 flights and delayed 2,689 flights, FlightAware data shows.
A Southwest spokeswoman blamed heavy fog in Chicago on Saturday and Sunday that prevented planes from landing and said some additional cancellations may be necessary on Monday before what is expected to be a full recovery on Tuesday.
The AAA auto club predicts that between Saturday and New Year’s Day, 115 million people in the US will travel at least 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home by air or car. That’s up 2% from last year.
More than 2.6 million people were screened by the Transportation Security Administration on Thursday, according to TSA records. Data from the weekend has not yet been released.
In the run-up to Thanksgiving, a record number of people traveled through US airports, surpassing 2019’s pre-COVID numbers with a single-day record of 2.9 million people screened by the TSA on Sunday, Nov. 26.
Compared to last year’s holiday season, milder weather has helped keep air travel schedules on time.
But on the ground, road conditions were treacherous in parts of the country on Christmas Day, the result of accumulating snow and ice in the Midwest and Great Plains. Most of Nebraska and South Dakota are facing blizzard conditions, and parts of eastern North and South Dakota are facing ice storms, according to the National Weather Service.
The busiest days on the road are forecast for Saturday, December 23, and next Thursday, December 28, according to transport data provider INRIX.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
