Massive Denver Flight Delays, Cancellations Continue Amid COVID Staffing Shortages

Dec. 27—Flights in and out of Denver International Airport continued to be canceled or delayed Monday.

As of 1 p.m. Monday, 416 flights were delayed and 92 flights were canceled at the airport, according to Flight Aware. On Sunday, 804 flights were delayed and 125 were canceled at DIA as a nationwide surge in omicron cases continued to disrupt travel during the busy holiday weekend.

The Colorado Springs Airport reported four flight cancellations and three delays on Christmas, Sunday and through 5:45 a.m. Monday. As of 1 p.m., the airport's flight status page shows six delays of more than 25 minutes on upcoming arriving flights Monday and seven delays of upcoming departing flights for the rest of Monday.

By Sunday evening, Denver had the most flight delays of any airport in the world for both destination and origin airports, according to Flight Aware. Denver also had the fourth most flight cancellations in the world. Flight Aware counts delays as any amount of time that's not on time.

Denver airport officials said the delays and cancellations weren't a result of the airport itself, saying the blame likely fell on the airlines.

"We don't have any control over that right now," Stephanie Figueroa with Denver International Airport said Sunday.

Of the 804 delays at Denver International Airport on Sunday, 265 were Southwest flights and 225 were United Airlines flights.

In a statement, United Airlines said the spike in omicron cases impacted its flight crews over the Christmas weekend.

"We've unfortunately had to cancel some flights and are notifying impacted customers in advance of them coming to the airport," the statement said. "We're sorry for the disruption and are working hard to rebook as many people as possible and get them on their way for the holidays."

Other airlines including Delta and Alaska Airlines have also attributed weekend delays and cancellations to the omicron variant.

Southwest said its delays were "mostly related to weather challenges being experienced across parts of the country today."

Monday marked the fourth day of mass flight cancellations throughout the U.S. On Sunday, 16,420 U.S. flights were delayed and 3,274 were canceled, according to Flight Aware.

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