If you are flying out today, it will be a good idea if you would check the status of your flight before you reach the airport. Christmas Eve plans have been dampened for many as thousands of flights have been canceled across the nation and overseas. There are two factors that have played Grinch–the weather in some parts of the nation and the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 across the nation.

Staff and crew have called in sick and airlines sometimes had no other option that to delay some flights and cancel others. The newest variant omicron has increased the number of COVID-19 cases across the nation. The major airlines in the nation released statements to outlets.

United released a statement which said that the nationwide spike in omicron cases had an impact on their flight crew and operational crew. The company was notifying its customers of canceled flights in advance, so that they could avoid coming to airports and then getting notifications of cancellations. The company also expressed regret for the disruptions and said that they were trying to rebook as many flights as possible.

Delta Airlines said that the cancellations of their flights were due to multiple issues including the omicron variant and potential severe weather in Salt Lake City and Seattle. They apologized for the delay and said that they were working hard to get their customers to where they needed to be as quickly and as safely as possible.

According to flight tracking site FlightAware, United has canceled 170 flights or about 9 percent of its scheduled flights. The site said that Delta Air Lines has canceled 130 flights on Christmas Eve. JetBlue canceled more than 50 flights which is roughly five percent of its scheduled flights while Alaska Airlines said that they canceled 17 flights on Thursday due to the omicron variant and 11 flights on Friday have been canceled, as of now.

Many international airlines including Lufthansa, Air India, Shenzhen Airlines, Lion Air, China Eastern and Air China have also canceled flights.