After three weeks or so in Tokyo, you can’t blame American athletes and staff members were excited to finally get home.
Well, unfortunately, a number of them are going to have to wait at least another day because their flight home on United Airlines, which is an Olympics sponsor, has been delayed for 18 hours courtesy of two of the most dreaded words for frequent fliers; mechanical issues.
Everyone booked on the flight from Tokyo to Chicago will spend another night in Tokyo. It was flight 1882, which was full and ready to head to America when everyone was asked to deplane at 6:30 a.m. Eastern on Monday.
The flight is not scheduled to leave until Noon on Tuesday.
American athletes are just some of millions of travelers who have been forced to deal with a very tumultuous time for airlines, that is affecting flights from coast to coast.
Spirit Airlines canceled or delayed hundreds of flights last week, and according to FlightAware, which tracks flights in the U.S., almost 5,000 flights have been delayed and almost 2,000 have been cancelled.
With the smoke finally fading from the closing ceremonies on Sunday, some other interesting details about the Tokyo Games are emerging.
The total cost for the Games came to $15.4 billion, which goes down as the most expensive Olympiad ever.
The numbers for NBC viewership was pretty bleak for the Peacock network. Their ratings were down 42% from the 2016 Games in Rio.
Here’s maybe the most interesting data from the just concluded Games. Incredibly, the IOC and leaders in Japan actually considered canceling the games, because of COVID. But after administering over 624,000 tests, only 430 tests came possible, a staggeringly low rate of 0,02%.
There was not one serious case of COVID reported among athletes and staff.
Add comment