Las Vegas airport sees more flight cancellations as CES arrives

More than 3,000 U.S. flights were canceled Monday at airports across the nation, including at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.

Reid airport saw 74 flights into and out of Las Vegas canceled Monday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. The nixed flights come as the city’s largest annual convention, CES, is slated to begin Wednesday. The show usually attracts upwards of 130,000 people, but a reduced turnout is expected this week amid the COVID-19 omicron variant outbreak.

Some attendees were already arriving Monday, picking up their badges and COVID-19 test kits at Reid international.

Nationally, a winter storm that hit the mid-Atlantic on Monday combined with pandemic-caused shortages of airline workers resulted in 3,046 flights within, into or out of the country canceled, FlightAware data listed.

Of the 10 airlines at Reid with canceled flights Monday, Las Vegas’ busiest carrier, Southwest Airlines, had the most with 22.

A Southwest spokesperson said the canceled flights in Las Vegas were part of more than 600 flights nixed out of more than 3,600 flights scheduled across the airline’s network as a result of the winter storm moving across the country.

Hometown carrier Allegiant Air saw 14 canceled flights at Reid, Alaska Airlines had eight canceled flights and Frontier Airlines had seven, according to FlightAware.

Monday’s cancellations come on the heels of 82 flights nixed at Reid on Sunday, according to FlightAware. Since Dec. 26, more than 500 flights have been canceled at the airport.

The toll of grounded flights in the U.S. was in the few hundreds per day the week before Christmas, then soared past 1,000 a day. Airlines blamed crew shortages on the spreading virus, including the highly transmissible omicron variant.

Airlines and passengers lucked out for several days with mostly favorable weather, but that changed when a winter storm hit the Midwest on Saturday and caused cancellations to spike again to new holiday-season highs.

Over the weekend, about 5,400 U.S. flights were canceled — nearly 12 percent of all scheduled flights — and more than 9,000 worldwide, according to FlightAware. By Monday afternoon, about 18,000 U.S. flights had been canceled since Christmas Eve.

Travelers could take hope from an improving weather forecast: Airlines had canceled fewer than 400 U.S. flights scheduled for Tuesday.

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.