SEATTLE, Dec.27 (Reuters) – The surge in COVID-19 cases hampered U.S. airline staff on Monday, prompting hundreds of flight cancellations, and prompted the nation’s top infectious disease expert to suggest that the government consider a vaccination mandate for domestic air travel.

Monday’s travel problems capped a gloomy Christmas weekend for thousands of stranded passengers waiting in queues at airports and on customer service lines to book flights, often several days past the original date. planned.

Like other companies, airlines have had staffing issues in recent days as the spread of infections with the Omicron variant has prevented pilots, cabin crew and other workers who have fallen ill at home.

Bad weather also weighed on travel. A total of 1,208 flights to, within or outside the United States were canceled Monday afternoon, according to flight tracking site flightaware.com.

The average number of new COVID-19 cases in the United States has increased 55% to more than 205,000 per day in the past seven days, according to a Reuters tally.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Monday it was reducing the recommended isolation time for Americans with COVID-19 to five days from its previous recommendation of 10 days, provided they are asymptomatic. The move could help airlines and other businesses alleviate staff shortages due to the disease.

Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease expert in the United States, also recommended Monday that the federal government consider a vaccination mandate for domestic air travel.

“This is just another of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider,” Fauci told MSNBC in an interview.

US President Joe Biden, speaking to reporters on Monday, declined to say whether he approves a vaccination mandate for domestic air travel.

In another case of Omicron-induced travel misery, the CDC said on Monday it was investigating 68 cruise ships after reports of COVID-19 cases on board.

HOLD TIME OF SEVEN HOURS

Snowy weather in the Pacific Northwest on Monday was also the cause of more than 110 canceled flight arrivals at the Seattle-Tacoma airport.

A representative from Alaska Airlines, which canceled more than 140 flights on Monday in part due to snowy conditions in Seattle, told a passenger on Twitter it would take hours before a customer service member could speak by phone , signaling the extent to which airline phone lines were swamped with frustrated passengers.

“The wait time is around 7 hours. I’m so sorry,” Alaska Airlines wrote on Twitter in response to a customer complaint.

Aisling Daniel, an 18-year-old college student, was trying to return home in Anchorage, Alaska with her younger sister and two black Labradors on Monday after visiting family in Kansas City. She was stuck at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and was hoping her newly booked flight Monday afternoon wouldn’t be canceled.

“The weather and the lack of staff at the airport are a very big problem here right now,” she said, the dogs wagging their tails behind her, their leashes tied to a railing.

Harley Garner, a 27-year-old creative strategist from Portland, and her brother from Seattle were staying with their parents in Pahrump, Nevada, during the holidays and planned to return home on Sunday night. The two brothers’ respective flights – to Portland via Alaska Airlines and to Seattle via Allegiant Airlines – were canceled on Sunday afternoon. The two managed to reserve seats on subsequent flights.

When their second flights were canceled, they decided to drive and hit the road shortly after 3 a.m. on Monday. Garner’s father drove his sons to Bakersfield, Calif., Where they planned to rent a car and then drive to Portland and Seattle, totaling around 17 hours on the road.

Garner said the most frustrating part of the travel nightmare, which Alaska Airlines said was weather-related, although Portland didn’t experience bad weather on Monday, was the last-minute cancellation notification.

“If you know a plane is not going to leave a location and it is a connecting flight, just cancel that flight,” he said. “Don’t play these games like you don’t know there is a staff shortage due to the coronavirus.”

Reporting by Lindsey Wasson in Seattle, Washington, and Gabriella Borter in Fairfield, Connecticut; Additional reporting by Aishwarya Nair, Jonathan Allen, Aleksandra Michalska and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Dan Grebler and Howard Goller

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