More Than 3,000 Flights Canceled on Christmas Morning

It’s a blue Christmas for some travelers this year, as airlines already canceled more than 3,000 flights and delayed over 9,600 others before noon Eastern Time on Sunday. A combination of severe winter weather and continuing staffing shortages has contributed to the problem. 

On Christmas Eve, airlines around the world nixed 5,775 trips and delayed nearly 19,000 more, according to the watchdog site FlightAware. Of that total, some 3,488 canceled flights were into, within or out of the US.

These figures are well above last year’s, according to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics: In December 2021, roughly 420 flights a day were canceled on average and only about 3,800 delayed.  

Thanks in large part to Winter Storm Elliott, Southwest Airlines ranked the worst of US-based airlines for on-time departures on Sunday morning, with 471 cancellations (about 12% of its entire schedule) and 1,112 delays (30%).

According to the travel industry blog View from the Wing, Southwest has been suffering from a shortage of pilots and ramp agents. Its customer service phone line has been so besieged it reportedly stopped taking calls. On Saturday, the airline issued a “state of operational emergency” at its hub, Denver International Airport, where nearly half (46%) of all flights were delayed.

“With more than half of the airports where we operate in the continental U.S. under duress from the storm, Southwest is uniquely affected, given our size and structure,” Southwest said in an advisory. 

Delta came in a close second for the most missed flights on Christmas morning, with 445 cancellations and 231 delays.

“The decision to cancel flights is never one Delta takes lightly, especially during the holiday travel season,” the airline said in a statement on its website. “But the safety of our customers and our people is paramount. We strive to cancel flights well in advance of scheduled departure to allow our customers to adjust their plans before going to the airport.”

United, the next closest carrier, only registered 145 cancellations and 312 delays.

Thanks to frigid temperatures and the threat of black ice, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Delta’s US hub, had the most disruptions of any airport anywhere on Earth on Sunday — 94 canceled and 109 delayed outgoing flights. Another 119 flights slated to arrive at Hartsfield-Jackson were nixed and 94 delayed.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency lasting through Monday “to mitigate potential consequences of this winter weather.” 

Read On: How to Avoid Flight Delays and Cancellations