Planes and trains holiday travel nightmare; thanks COVID

ELLIS COUNTY – Planes and trains were snarled this holiday season - one of the  busiest times of the  travel year – thanks once again to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to one traveler, it was a cacophony of issues ranging from frozen carousels, omicron, and weather depending on who you ask and where they were stranded.

It took one passenger reportedly 10 hours to receive her bag.

News Nation Now reported thousands of travelers were impacted by flights delays and cancellations over the holiday week.

The numbers are indeed staggering, with over 6,500 being delayed in the United States in just six days – with most of the flights issues occurring the day after Christmas.

On Christmas there were almost 1000 fights canceled, and from there it went into the thousands every day thereafter.

While Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport did not see the number of cancellations as Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, which seemed to have had the most issues with weather and Omicron issues, LAX in Los Angeles, O’Hare in Chicago and Newark airport in New Jersey all had equal nightmare’s for travelers.

Airlines are attributing the delays and cancellations to the pandemic, which has cut into the staffing available to staff the fights – some of the airlines too had insisted on mandatory vaccinations for their staff.

One report said JetBlue seemed to be the hardest hit with over 15-percent of its fights canceled on just one day during the holiday. 

And, weather didn’t play nice either in some parts of the  country resulting in a total holiday nightmare.

Trying to change or rebook was taking up to four hours one passenger said who was flying American Airlines.

However as a frequent traveler/travel writer, I know that kind of bad customer service had already become the norm on American Airlines anyway.

Reportedly the airline industry had received $54-billion in federal aid so there would be workers on the job during the pandemic, and this came with a ban on layoffs.

Even so, many airline carriers still got rid of staff over the past year offering early-retirement and buyouts, certainly this staffing decision caused havoc during the holiday too.

Remember, both American Airlines and Southwest already experienced this same fiasco in October when both canceled thousands of  flights due to weather and a shortage of air traffic controllers.

Amtrak trains in some parts of Texas and around the country were also canceled due to weather and a shortage of workers due to COVID-19 omicron.

One family traveling to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s day found out the morning they were leaving and the same day as the bowl game that their train had been canceled.

They ended up making the drive in order to get to the game.

“There was no warning about the cancellation and Amtrak actually ask us if we wanted a refund,” the family said in amazement.