More than 1,000 flights were canceled on Saturday morning, according to the FlightAware flight tracking website, after 2,300 cancellations on Friday. Delta Air Lines (DAL) is the most affected by the cancellations, with more than 230 flights, or 8% of its operations, canceled on Saturday. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, home to Delta and its largest center, is heavily affected by travel problems.
The airline blamed Saturday’s cancellations for bad weather and “air traffic control actions” on Friday and said it was trying to cancel flights at least 24 hours in advance.
United canceled 23 flights and JetBlue canceled 10 on Saturday, about 1% of airline operations.
On Thursday, Delta announced that it was reducing its summer flight schedule before Memorial Day weekend. From July 1 to August 7, the airline said, it would reduce about 100 daily flights, mostly to the U.S. and Latin America.
“More than at any time in our history, the various factors that currently affect our operation: weather and air traffic control, staffing of vendors, increased COVID case rates that contribute to absences are not leading to an operation that does not consistently conform to the standards that Delta has set for the industry in recent years, “said the director of experience of the Allison Ausband client in an online publication.
Airlines are also pre-emptively canceling nearly 200 flights on Monday. Delta has done 75 so far.
Delta said in its post that it will issue travel exemptions for those affected by bad weather in the southeast and northeast this weekend. The affected airports, which include areas of New York City and Washington, DC, are listed on the company’s website.
Delta said it was expecting about 2.5 million customers over the holiday weekend, up a quarter from last year. AAA estimates that 3 million Americans fly by air during Memorial Day weekend.
Separately, JetBlue said it would cut its daylight saving time by 8% to 10%. “Alaska Airlines reduced its schedule by about 2% until June to match” pilot capacity. “
– CNN’s Marnie Hunter contributed to this report.