Then Covid-19’s Omicron variant arrived. With its headquarters in New York, which leads the country in new case counts, JetBlue was quickly overwhelmed. Daily sick calls more than quadrupled, Chief Executive
Robin Hayes
said. On Dec. 21, JetBlue canceled no flights. Four days later, on Christmas Day, it scrapped 12% of its schedule.
“Because of the exponential increase, you get to a point where you exhaust all your available reserves,” Mr. Hayes said.
Airlines are struggling through one of the most severe and persistent mass-cancellation events of the past decade, according to data compiled by FlightAware, after U.S. Covid-19 infections surged too quickly for carriers to manage without upending holiday travel, wreaking havoc on already-stretched airline workforces. Now carriers are assessing how to better manage what could continue to…
