Commercial airlines around the world cancelled more than 4,500 flights over the Christmas weekend, as a mounting wave of Covid-19 infections driven by the Omicron variant created greater uncertainty and misery for holiday travellers. Airline carriers globally scrapped at least 2,401 flights on Christmas Eve and is typically a heavy day for air travel, according to a running tally on the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. The website showed that 1,779 Christmas Day flights were called off worldwide, along with 402 more that had been scheduled for Sunday. Read MoreCommercial air traffic within the United States and into or out of the country accounted for more than a quarter of all the cancelled flights over the weekend, FlightAware data showed. The Biden administration will next week lift travel restrictions on eight southern African countries imposed last month over concerns about the Omicron variant, the White House said.

Source: Irish Independent December 25, 2021 20:05 UTC