US flight cancellations ease a bit but still running high

By The Associated Press

Better weather is helping some travelers get home after the New Year’s holiday, but airlines are still canceling a high number of flights. 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 canceled flights. Southwest Airlines has canceled about 400 flights, or 12% of its schedule for the day. The number of canceled flights began rising Dec. 24, and several airlines blamed it on crew shortages due to the spreading omicron variant of COVID-19.