United, Delta combine to preemptively cancel more than 200 flights on Christmas Eve

United Airlines had preemptively canceled more than 125 flights on Friday and Delta Air Lines more than 85, as operational issues appeared to be building right ahead of the (2021) Christmas holiday.

The recent wave of COVID-19 infections sparked by the omicron variant appeared to be driving many of the disruptions, with United’s flight-status page going so far as to attribute some cancellations to “an increase in Covid cases limiting crew availability.”