U.S. air passengers have faced major flight cancellations and delays this weekend, caused by a rise in travel demand along with widespread staff shortages.
From Friday to Sunday, airlines flying in, inside or outside the United States canceled more than 1,400 flights, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking website, trapping and angering some passengers heading for a vacation. long-awaited summer. In addition, more than 14,000 flights have been delayed this holiday weekend, according to site data.
Some airlines seemed to be struggling to manage the volume of passengers approaching or, in some cases, even exceeding pre-pandemic levels. On Friday, the Transportation Security Administration examined more passengers (2.49 million people) than on any other day this year. This exceeded the 2.18 travelers projected on July 1, 2019, before the pandemic.
The experience was frustrating for some passengers of American carriers. On Saturday, 1,048 — or 29 percent — of Southwest Airlines flights were delayed, as were 28 percent of American Airlines flights, according to FlightAware. United Airlines and Delta Air Lines had similar problems, with 21% and 19% of their flights also delayed. On Sunday, in the middle of the holiday weekend, travelers seemed to be taking a breather from the worst of problems.
“Obviously, if it’s your flight that is delayed or canceled, it’s a disaster,” said Robert W. Mann Jr., a former airline executive who now heads airline consultancy RW Mann & Company.
In a typical month, Mr. pointed out. Mann, about 20 percent of flights are delayed or canceled. But this holiday weekend, he said, was about 30 percent, a 50 percent increase. “It’s a little worse than usual,” he said.
Added to the pressure on airlines this weekend was a failure in American Airlines ’pilot scheduling system that allowed pilots to drop thousands of flight duties by July. The airline said Saturday it did not anticipate any “operational impact” due to the error.
But the Allied Pilots Association, the American Airlines pilots ‘union, said the airline had unilaterally reinstated abandoned flights without the pilots’ agreement. The union said it was pressuring the airline to pay a “nuisance premium” to pilots affected by scheduling system problems.
In a look at the growing frustration of passengers this summer, Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, apologized last week.
“I know that many of you may have experienced disruptions, sometimes significant, in your travels as we rebuild our operation from the depths of 2020, while meeting a record level of demand,” Mr Bastian wrote in a statement. posting on LinkedIn. He added: “While most of our flights continue to operate on time, this level of disruption and uncertainty is unacceptable.”
In an email, Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant said the airline was dealing with “aggravating factors” of bad weather and delays in air traffic control, which affect the availability of flight crews. The airline was “working all day to make Delta’s operation as resilient as possible to minimize the domino effect of disruptions,” Durrant said. “Still, some operational challenges are expected this holiday weekend.”
However, as the holiday weekend progressed, the series of flight problems began to wane. On Sunday evening, Delta had canceled only 1 percent of its flights and only 15 percent of Southwest Airlines flights had been delayed, according to FlightAware.
Southwest said Sunday it offered “a safe and reliable experience on our network today with less than 10 cancellations in total” for the day.
American Airlines and United Airlines did not immediately respond to emails requesting comments.