The day after Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg met with airline leaders to ask about widespread flight disruptions, his own flight was canceled and he ended up driving from Washington to New York. .
“This is happening to a lot of people, and that’s exactly why we’re paying close attention here to what can be done and how to make sure the airlines deliver,” Buttigieg told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday.
Buttigieg said he is pressuring airlines to test the stress of their summer hours to make sure they can operate all of their planned flights with the employees they have and to add customer service workers. This could put pressure on airlines to make additional cuts to their daylight saving time.
Buttigieg said his department could take enforcement action against airlines that do not meet consumer protection standards. But first, he said, he wants to see if there are major flight interruptions during the holiday weekend in the fourth quarter of July and the rest of the summer.
Enforcement actions can lead to fines, although they are usually small. Air Canada agreed to pay a $ 2 million fine last year for slow repayments.
During the virtual meeting on Thursday, airline executives described the steps they are taking to prevent a repeat of Memorial Day weekend, when some 2,800 flights were canceled. “We will now see how these steps are measured,” Buttigieg said.
The trips are back. On Friday, more than 2.4 million people went through security checks at U.S. airports, close to 12,500 after surpassing the pandemic-era high recorded on Sunday after the Thanksgiving Day. ‘last year.
The record would surely have been broken if the airlines had not canceled 1,400 flights, many of them because the storms affected parts of the east coast. The day before, airlines cleaned up more than 1,700 flights, according to FlightAware.
Weather is always a joke when it comes to flying in the summer, but airlines have also acknowledged staff shortages, as travel returned faster than expected due to pandemic lows. Airlines are struggling to hire pilots and other workers to replace employees who were encouraged to resign after the pandemic.
It takes months to hire and train a pilot to meet federal safety standards, but the Department of Transportation sees no reason why airlines can’t immediately add customer service representatives to help passengers book if canceled. his flight.
The government has its own staffing challenges.
The shortage of the Federal Aviation Administration, which is part of the Buttigieg department, has contributed to flight delays in Florida. The FAA is committed to increasing its workforce. The Transportation Security Administration, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, has created a traveling force of 1,000 inspectors that can be sent to airports where control lines are too long.