Delta Airlines passenger planes are on display outside the recently completed $ 4 billion Delta Airlines Terminal C at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on June 1, 2022.
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Thousands of flights were canceled and delayed during the holiday weekend of June and Father’s Day, which included the busiest air travel day of the year on Friday, according to the TSA.
More than 2.4 million people traveled through TSA checkpoints on Friday, according to the agency. On the same day, airlines had canceled more than 1,100 flights in the early afternoon, after more than 1,700 flights on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
More than 6,300 flights to and from the U.S. were delayed on Saturday, and 859 flights were canceled, according to the FlightAware flight tracking platform.
As of Sunday morning, more than 1,000 flights in and out of the U.S. had been delayed and more than 700 flights had been canceled, according to FlightAware. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport had more delays and cancellations on Sunday.
About 2,700 flights were canceled during Memorial Day weekend.
Due to the shortage of staff, and in particular the shortage of pilots, many airlines have already canceled thousands of flights for the summer season, including Southwest Airlines, which reduced nearly 20,000 summer flights. according to a Dallas Morning News report.
Delta is canceling 100 daily departures from destinations in the US and Latin America, affecting travel from July 1 to August 7. The airline issued an open letter to customers on Thursday acknowledging both labor shortages and customer frustrations with canceled and delayed flights.
Juneteenth’s weekend travel disruptions followed a meeting that Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg had with airline CEOs on Thursday afternoon to discuss how to improve their operations.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Saturday, Buttigieg said his own flight from Washington to New York had been canceled on Friday, which led him to fly, and that he was pressuring airline leaders because they could fulfill their planned summer flights with the staff they have.
Buttigieg added that the Department of Transportation could take enforcement action against the airlines, but warned that he wanted to wait and see how the airline’s trips developed first over the weekend of July and the rest. of the summer season.