“We have employees who are either ill, have symptoms or have someone in their household who is ill, and are therefore staying home given current recommendations,” said SAS spokeswoman Freja Annamatz.

“Just like other businesses, we are experiencing increased sick leave, which is part of the reason that we have had to cancel flights.”

Technical issues in some cases and a strike in Frankfurt had also compounded the issue, she said.

The Nordic carrier had to cancel nine flights out of Stockholm’s Arlanda airport on Wednesday, and some 30 flights worldwide the day before.

But she added that, during one of busiest times of the year with around 600 flights a day, the vast majority of planes were still departing as planned.

The airline’s website shows at the time of writing six cancelled flights out of Copenhagen on December 22nd on services to Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, Frankfurt, San Francisco and Newark.

No cancellations were showing in departures from Billund, Aalborg or Aarhus airports.

From Oslo, SAS flights to Trondheim, Stavanger, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris and Manchester were cancelled on December 22nd.