Travelers in Southwest Colorado have begun to feel the effects of flight disruptions across the U.S.

The Durango-La Plata County Airport has been hit by a wave of cancellations and delays since Saturday, making holiday return travel difficult.

“There admittedly are many frustrated travelers out there,” said Tony Vicari, director of aviation at DRO. “We’ve been communicating with those folks to the best extent we can, but the impacts that we’ve seen have been reflective of a nationwide challenge in the airline industry.”

In the first three days of January, DRO has experienced 11 flight cancellations and numerous delays, Vicari said. On Monday alone, three flights to Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, were canceled and one flight to Denver was canceled.

The airport does not track delays, but cancellations have been unusually high.

DRO has about 12 daily departures this time of year, Vicari said, which means nearly a third of all flights out of the airport have been canceled in the first three days of January.

“Over the course of an entire year, our (cancellation) figure is somewhere between 1.5% and 3%,” he said. “This is between 10 and 20 times the type of cancellation rate that we would typically see over an extended period of time.”

While weather was blamed for cancellations around the Christmas holiday, Vicari and airlines have attributed the current disruptions to the rapid spread of the omicron variant.

“Omicron has had a significant impact on flight crew availability for all airlines nationwide,” he said. “The predominance of our flights that canceled in January have been canceled citing flight crew availability from the airlines. That’s due to positive omicron cases in airline flight crews throughout the country and the need for those folks to quarantine or isolate.”

JetBlue said it had received “record-breaking sick calls” in a staff memo last week, according to The New York Times.

Staffing shortages and intense holiday demand have significantly lowered the capacity of airlines across the country.

The New York Times reported that airlines have canceled more than 8,000 flights in the U.S. since Jan. 1, accounting for more than 1 in 10 flights.

FlightAware, a flight tracking company, showed more than 3,000 cancellations and almost 6,000 delayed flights around the U.S. on Monday afternoon.

Denver International Airport has been among the worst airports in the country. DIA had more than 100 canceled departures and 120 arrivals on Monday, according to FlightAware.

Vicari said the last number he had seen was over 15,000 canceled flights in the last two weeks.

“We understand that we have a lot of frustrated travelers and just want to make sure that they understand that this is a national issue and not just a Durango issue,” he said.

DRO flights to and from Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix have all been affected. Frontier has been the only carrier at the airport without a cancellation, Vicari said.

It may seem as though the problems disproportionately affect smaller airports in rural communities because of the severe disruptions at DRO, but the entire industry has been overwhelmed.

“It’s really been an impact on a national level. We’re seeing a similar level of disruption across the board, regional up through hub airports,” Vicari said.

For those who plan to travel, it is crucial that they monitor their airlines for delays or cancellations.

“If you have any critical travel where time is of the essence, you need to be monitoring those,” Vicari said.

Travelers should also consider contacting their airline to make alternate arrangements or consider moving their flights to an earlier date or time, he said.

Even if travelers are proactive, they still face travel interruptions.

With limited flight crews and fewer flights, more people are jockeying for each seat, leading to a nationwide seat shortage, Vicari said.

Travelers will likely confront the same delays, cancellations and frustrations in the coming weeks as omicron spreads with no immediate end in sight.

“Unfortunately, we’re projecting that there’s going to be some staffing turbulence in the airlines for at least the short-term future,” Vicari said.

“I think most folks are anticipating a bumpy road at least this week,” he said.

ahannon@durangoherald.com