A week of travel woes: More than 8,000 flights canceled since Christmas Eve

JetBlue is canceling more than 1,200 flights over the next two weeks.

Thursday marks a week of travel woes across the country with more than 8,000 flight cancellations nationwide since Christmas Eve. As millions of Americans travel during what could be the busiest travel period since the start of the pandemic, airlines have been slammed with both winter weather and rising COVID-19 cases among flight crews.

Now, at least one major U.S. airline, JetBlue Airways, is signaling this weeklong crush of cancellations may just be the beginning.

JetBlue said on Wednesday it is preemptively canceling more than 1,200 flights over the next two weeks in order to have enough crews available to run a reliable operation.

"While the new CDC guidelines should help get crewmembers back to work sooner, and our schedule reduction and other efforts will further ease day-of cancellations, we expect the number of COVID cases in the northeast -- where most of our crewmembers are based -- to continue to surge for the next week or two," the airline said in a statement. "This means there is a high likelihood of additional cancellations until case counts start to come down."