Clearing weather over much of the eastern United States raised hopes that air-travel disruptions will ease after a dreadful start to the new year.
By early Tuesday evening on the East Coast, airlines had scrubbed about 1,500 flights for the day. That’s a very high number but well below Monday’s disruptions, which included more than 3,200 cancelled flights.
Southwest Airlines cancelled about 400 flights, or 12% of its schedule Tuesday.
Airlines had already cancelled nearly 500 US flights for Wednesday, according to FlightAware.
The number of cancelled flights began rising Dec 24, and several airlines blamed it on crew shortages due to the spreading omicron variant of COVID-19. Over the weekend, the sickouts were compounded by winter storms that swept across the country.
