MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, FLA. (WSVN) - Passengers across the country were forced to deal with various obstacles due to COVID when they headed to the airport this weekend, and those traveling out of South Florida were no exception.
Flight cancellations and delays made the day after Christmas challenging for some travelers at Miami International Airport.
Sunday night, there were three kinds of people at MIA: people coming, people going and people waiting.
“We supposed to been at home since about 2 o’clock,” said passenger Sedrick Bell.
Like hundreds of travelers around the country, passenger Aviva Gluck has had to wait longer than expected to fly out.
“[My flight was] delayed. It didn’t even land in Miami yet,” she said.
MIA reported 16 cancellations and 88 delayed flights on Sunday. In total, the airport reported 42 cancellations on flights scheduled between Saturday and Monday.
Meanwhile, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport showed 29 canceled flights and 77 delays on Sunday.
Bell said his entire family is anxious to get back to Atlanta.
“Makes me feel really bad, because we got our kids here, and we’re trying to make it home,” he said. “Everybody’s got work tomorrow.”
Bell said their JetBlue flight out of FLL was canceled at the last minute.
The airline sent them to MIA to board an American Airlines flight instead. But it appears they were not out of the woods just yet.
“We’ve been getting a lot of cancellations on American Airlines’ side,” said traveler Richard Jean.
The airline tracking app FlightAware showed over 1,000 cancellations for flights traveling in or out of the United States. The app showed American Airlines accounted for the majority of canceled flights at MIA.
A spokesperson for American said they’ve grounded flights because employees have called out sick with COVID.
“I’m a nurse, so I know that omicron is crazy right now. The numbers have been climbing like nuts throughout the country,” said Gluck.
Like so many other passengers, she packed her patience as she, like many others, waited to board her late flight.
“It was supposed to be 7:30 to JFK [International Airport],” she said.
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