SEA Airport Delays: Flights Canceled By Snow, Omicron Impacts

SEATTLE — Flight cancellations and delays continued to disrupt holiday travel at the nation’s airports Monday, including at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, amid harsh winter weather and a surge in COVID-19 cases caused by the omicron variant.

Airlines cited labor shortages related to the omicron surge for the cancellation of hundreds of flights over the weekend. The problems continued Monday, with more than 8,000 flights to, from and within the United States having been canceled since Christmas Eve, according to data from FlightAware, an online flight-tracking service.

Even before the snow and ice arrived, Port of Seattle officials expected Monday would be the busiest in the Christmas stretch, with nearly 140,000 travelers expected to pass through the airport. Holiday travel volumes have rebounded nearly 90 percent of their pre-pandemic levels, airport officials said.

Seattle airport crews have worked around the clock since Christmas evening to plow and treat runways, taxiways and ramps as Puget Sound picked up 5 to 6 inches of snow through Sunday afternoon. Even with a little sunshine Monday, temperatures look unlikely to break the freezing mark before Thursday, which will continue to complicate travel heading into New Year's Eve.

To check on flights in and out of SEA, check with the flight tracking service FlightAware or with your airline. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, delays for Seattle arrivals were averaging about 40 minutes late Monday morning.

Delta, United, JetBlue and American have all cited coronavirus staffing problems. European and Australian airlines also canceled holiday-season flights because staff were infected, but weather and other factors played a role as well, The Associated Press reported.

Weather also played a role in the United States. Snow in the Pacific Northwest led to nearly 250 flight cancellations in and out of Seattle Sunday, according to Alaska Airlines, which expected about 100 weather-related flight cancellations Monday, the AP reported. COVID-19 wasn’t a factor in the cancellations.

A Delta flight bound for Shangai was forced to return to Seattle last week, due to tightened cleaning requirements at the flight's destination, the airline said.

United Airlines canceled 115 of nearly 4,000 flights Monday because staff and crew members called in sick with COVID-19, the airline said.

Complicating matters, Sun Country Airlines and others canceled domestic flights because of a third-party network system outage Monday.

More staffing problems are possible.

“We have seen an increasing number of sick calls from omicron,” the airline said, adding it had entered the holiday season with the highest staffing levels since the pandemic began,” Jet Blue said in a statement.

“Despite our best efforts, we’ve had to cancel a number of flights, and additional flight cancellations and other delays remain a possibility.”