air travelers
Air travelers face cancellations over Memorial Day weekend
Airline travelers are not only facing sticker shock this Memorial Day weekend, the kickoff to the summer travel season. They're also dealing with a pileup of flight cancellations.
More than 1,500 flights were canceled as of 9:50 p.m EDT Saturday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. That followed more than 2,300 cancellations on Friday.
Delta Air Lines suffered the most among U.S. airlines, with more than 250 flights, or 9% of its operations, eliminated on Saturday. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, where Delta is based and has its largest hub, experienced heavy travel delays. On Saturday, 5% of the flights there were canceled, while 16% were delayed.
Delta noted in an email to The Associated Press that Saturday’s cancellations were due to bad weather and “air traffic control actions,” noting it's trying to cancel flights at least 24 hours in advance this Memorial Day weekend.
READ: New year brings more canceled flights for air travelers
Delta announced on its website on Thursday that from July 1 to Aug. 7, it would reduce service by about 100 daily departures, primarily in parts of the U.S. and Latin America that Delta frequently serves.
“More than any time in our history, the various factors currently impacting our operation — weather and air traffic control, vendor staffing, increased COVID case rates contributing to higher-than-planned unscheduled absences in some work groups — are resulting in an operation that isn’t consistently up to the standards Delta has set for the industry in recent years,” said Delta's Chief Customer Experience Officer Allison Ausband in a post.
Airlines and tourist destinations are anticipating monster crowds this summer as travel restrictions ease and pandemic fatigue overcomes lingering fear of contracting COVID-19 during travel.
Many forecasters believe the number of travelers will match or even surpass levels in the good-old, pre-pandemic days. However, airlines have thousands fewer employees than they did in 2019, and that has at times contributed to widespread flight cancellations.
People who are only now booking travel for the summer are experiencing the sticker shock.
Domestic airline fares for summer are averaging more than $400 for a round trip, 24% higher than this time in 2019, before the pandemic, and a robust 45% higher than a year ago, according to travel-data firm Hopper.
2 years ago
Snow storms and pandemic ground flights, delay holiday's end
Wintry weather combined with the pandemic to frustrate air travelers whose return flights home from the holidays were canceled or delayed in the first days of the new year.
More than 2,500 U.S. flights and more than 4,100 worldwide were grounded Sunday, according to tracking service FlightAware.
That followed Saturday's mass cancellations of more than 2,700 U.S. flights, and more than 4,700 worldwide.
“It was absolute mayhem,” said Natasha Enos, who spent a sleepless Saturday night and Sunday morning at Denver International Airport during what was supposed to be a short layover on a cross-country trip from Washington to San Francisco.
Read: New year brings more canceled flights for air travelers
Saturday's single-day U.S. toll of grounded flights was the highest since just before Christmas, when airlines began blaming staffing shortages on increasing COVID-19 infections among crews.
A winter storm that hit the Midwest on Saturday made Chicago the worst place in the country for travelers throughout the weekend. About a quarter of all flights at O’Hare Airport were canceled Sunday.
Denver's airport also faced significant disruptions. Enos, who was flying on Frontier Airlines, didn't learn that her connecting flight home to California was canceled until she had already landed in Denver. Then it was a rush to find alternative flights and navigate through baggage claims packed with stranded and confused travelers, amid concerns about the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant of COVID-19.
“It was a lot of people in a very small space and not everybody was masking,” said the 28-year-old financial analyst. “There were a lot of exhausted kids and some families were so stressed out.”
In Michigan, the authority that runs Detroit International Airport said crews were working around the clock to remove snow and maintain the airfield. Atlanta's airport authority advised travelers to arrive earlier than usual because of high passenger volume, potential weather issues and pandemic-fueled staffing shortages that could lengthen the time it takes to get through security gates.
And thousands of miles from the closest snow storms, Hawaiian Airlines said it had to cancel several flights between islands and across the Pacific due to staffing shortages.
Southwest Airlines said it was working to help customers affected by about 400 flights canceled around the country Sunday, about 11% of its schedule. The Dallas-based airline anticipates even more operational challenges to come as the storm system pushes into the Eastern seaboard.
Delta Air Lines said Sunday it was issuing a travel waiver for planned flights this week out of mid-Atlantic airports in Baltimore and Washington in preparation for forecasted winter weather.
Read: Flight cancellations snarl holiday plans for thousands
American Airlines said most of Sunday's canceled flights had been canceled ahead of time to avoid last-minute disruptions at the airport.
SkyWest, a regional carrier that operates flights under the names American Eagle, Delta Connection and United Express, grounded nearly 500 flights Sunday, about 20% of its schedule, according to FlightAware.
Airlines have said they are taking steps to reduce cancellations caused by workers affected by the omicron variant. United is offering to pay pilots triple or more of their usual wages for picking up open flights through most of January. Spirit Airlines reached a deal with the Association of Flight Attendants for double pay for cabin crews through Tuesday, a union spokesperson said.
Airlines hope that extra pay and reduced schedules get them through the holiday crush and into the heart of January, when travel demand usually drops off. The seasonal decline could be sharper than normal this year because most business travelers are still grounded.
2 years ago