More than 2,800 flights were canceled over the Christmas weekend due to rising COVID-19 cases. Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman and Brian Sozzi discuss the impact on travel and airline stocks.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: We have also been watching I mentioned at the top of the show, travel disruptions. And there were a number of canceled flights over the weekend, partially because of weather but also largely because of COVID. And not so much COVID precautions or quarantines necessarily but because people are sick with the Omicron variant.

So 2,300 US flights, according to FlightAware were canceled on Saturday and Sunday. And then it looks like there were an initial 2,100 canceled on Monday. This-- These are global numbers by the way. 3,500 over the weekend globally. So a lot of flights canceled in the US, a lot of flights canceled globally. And Sozz, we are seeing now a number of these stocks show some weakness in early trading here today.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah. Julie, it's the airlines under pressure, it's the cruise line stocks under pressure. To a lesser extent, the hotel names are under pressure as well. I mean, the basic read-through here is that you could potentially, if you're canceling your-- you can't get to where you need to go on an airplane, perhaps you're seeing cancellations or you just go out there and cancel your hotel reservations and obviously, that would impact the likes of a Marriott, the Hilton, you name it. But I am surprised, Julie. You know, I know a lot of these travel names have underperformed the S&P 500 the past month, that we have not seen a larger correction in these transport-- these travel stocks given everything we have seen with Omicron. And you have to think given where we are in the pandemic, we could see that correction at some point soon as these companies come out, present to investment banks in January ahead of earnings, and potentially warn about their corporate profits.

JULIE HYMAN: It's possible, though I would also say if you look at the trajectory of the variant in other nations, notably in South Africa, we have seen a-- just like we have seen a very, very rapid acceleration of the virus here in the US, that's what they saw there. And then it peaked and started to come down and that is the addition of new cases. So perhaps investors are viewing, still viewing the folks who have been buying these airline stocks all along are still viewing some of these travel disruptions as temporary.

In other words, if a bunch of people are home sick who work for the airlines, they're going to be back at work in a week or two weeks, right? And we will start to not see these kinds of cancellations perhaps. So is it still going to hit the bottom line? Probably, how can it not if you have a bunch of cancellations but I just wonder how sustained the effect is going to be this time around.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah. If you're investing in these travel names, Julie, I think if we've learned anything in the past few months, in particular, these types of situations when COVID flares up, it's going to become part of the investment thesis. Workers are going to be hard to find, you're going to have to pay them more, that will impact the bottom line. Quarters will be a lot less-- you won't be able to compare them to historical norms. So it's a tough space to put money to work and headed into next year for sure.

JULIE HYMAN: And one other thing I should mention coming on the back of what Anjalee was saying about quarantine for health care workers being shortened, there's an airline trade group that has now asked the CDC to shorten their quarantine period as well for-- specifically, for fully vaccinated employees, that their quarantine period be shortened to a maximum of five days from 10 days. And that they be allowed to test out of that. So we'll have to see if we see more industries moving towards that kind of standard and maybe if that alleviates on the margin some of these shortages and some of this congestion, Sozz.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, I think the bigger problem, Julie, and maybe this is a debate for a different day or topic, is training. You know, you have to get more bodies into training programs, people that want to be pilots or work inside the airplanes. These are incredibly tough, tough jobs. And why bother working in an airplane where you could be getting shouted out by unruly passengers and suddenly now you turn into an internet meme or video here. So these are tough gigs. They probably don't pay enough but it underscores the challenges of finding that next generation of talent to ultimately take these jobs post-pandemic.

JULIE HYMAN: Now, we have to look into what folks who work on planes make. I don't know if they don't make enough. I think they have pretty well-paying jobs but we'll have to do a little more future--

BRIAN SOZZI: They're all underpaid to me. Given what they have to deal with. They're all--

JULIE HYMAN: Everybody's underpaid.

BRIAN SOZZI: My hat's off to them because these are tough jobs.