Flight cancellations continue for holiday travelers at O’Hare, Midway with airline staffing issues

CHICAGO (WLS) — Staffing issues blamed on COVID are making it complicated for air travelers over the holidays.

O’Hare Airport has been quite busy for the last week. According to Flight Aware, it’s been the busiest airport in the country with nearly 12,000 arrivals in the last week.

More delays and cancellations have been reported, with roughly 50 impacted flights out of O’Hare and nearly 350 nationwide.

Airlines like United and American say they’ve been forced to cancel flights because of staff shortages driven by the omicron surge.

That, combined with bad weather nationwide, has led to more than 5,000 flights in the U.S. being grounded since Friday.

“One of my best friends is stuck in Mexico right now, and her family tested positive,” traveler Lucy Burke said. “They got kicked out of their hotel room. It’s just a whole disaster.”

Burke and her sister, Charlotte, were back home in Chicago Sunday after a scare coming from Mexico.

“It was a lot of more stress around the return travel, if we could get back,” Burke said. “We had friends that were testing positive and we were really worried. We were like, ‘We don’t know what we’re going to do if that happens.'”

More travel chaos is expected Monday as airlines continue to grapple with these issues and airports expected to be busiest until January 3.