Holiday Flights Canceled at LAX, Other Airports Due to COVID-19 Issues

LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A wave of worldwide flight cancellations continued to affect LAX today, with 81 Christmas Day flights canceled.

As of 11 a.m., the tracking site FlightAware.com listed 2,648 flight cancellations worldwide for Saturday, 937 involving flights into or out of the United States.

On Friday, 2,380 flights were canceled worldwide -- 690 involving U.S. flights and 86 at LAX.

The scrapped flights were largely blamed on airline staffing shortages caused by the latest surge in coronavirus cases, fueled by the Omicron variant. Weather issues were also causing some of the cancellations.

"We know some airline cancellations across the country are in the news. At LAX today, our flights are showing over 90% on time right now with 25 cancellations out of 1,028 scheduled flights,'' LAX tweeted at 9:23 a.m. Friday.

LAX had not commented on Saturday's cancellations as of late Christmas morning.

Five cancellations were listed Saturday at Orange County's John Wayne Airport, and none at Long Beach Airport or Hollywood Burbank Airport.

(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)