Snow storms and pandemic ground flights, delay holiday’s end

Wintry weather combined with the pandemic to frustrate air travelers whose return flights home from the holidays were canceled or delayed in the first days of the new year. The tracking service FlightAware said more than 2,500 U.S. flights and more than 4,100 worldwide were grounded Sunday. That followed Saturday’s mass cancellations of more than 2,700 U.S. flights, and more than 4,700 worldwide. Saturday’s single-day U.S. toll of grounded flights was the highest since just before Christmas, when airlines began blaming staffing shortages on increasing COVID-19 infections among crews.