Airlines have canceled hundreds of U.S. flights at the start of a long and almost certainly chaotic holiday travel weekend as airlines struggle to staff their planes.
According to flight-tracking service flightaware.com, as of noon, about 600 flights in and out of the United States were canceled and more than 2,500 delayed as Americans prepared for the Fourth of July celebration.
Friday's numbers were also bad, with 3,060flight cancellationsworldwide , including 587 U.S. flights, the website said.
Travel has surged for days as summer approaches and people tired of living with the pandemic want to go elsewhere again, horror as travelers get stuck in airports on long adventures to get where they're going Stories abound.
The airline industry took a hit in the early stages of the pandemic as people stayed home.
Although federal Covid-19 relief has spared airlines from laying off workers, tens of thousands of workers have left the industry after airlines urged early retirement.
Analysts at Third Bridge Consulting estimated that the industry has about 15% fewer workers today than before the pandemic to handle about 90% of passenger traffic by 2020.
The travel chaos has drawn scrutiny from Washington Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and others.
On Saturday, Buttigieg posted a series of tweets that were essentially tips for consumers about what to do if a flight was canceled, such as whether to accept travel credits or miles as compensation or ask for a cash refund.
"You can often negotiate this. That's between you and the airline," Buttigieg wrote.
On Thursday, Delta pilots walked information picket lines at several airports, demanding new contracts and complaining about being overworked, among other things.
"Frankly, it's irresponsible scheduling, over-scheduling. Coming out of the pandemic, we're scheduling more flights than we're taking," Delta Pilots Association union leader Jason Ambrosi Zhou said. Six told CNN.
"Honestly, the pilots are getting tired," Ambrosi said.He said they didn't want to put passengers or crew in trouble, "but it's a safety issue."
Third Bridge analyst Peter McNally said pilots were the worst problem in the airline industry's labor crunch.
"There is no short-term solution," McNally told AFP."The problem becomes most pronounced during these seasonal peaks."
Airlines said they were working to address the issue, recruiting pilots and other staff and reducing summer seating capacity by 15%.
While acknowledging the pilot supply problem, aviation industry officials pointed to other exacerbating factors, including turbulent weather, increased employee absenteeism due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a shortage of flight traffic controllers in some locations.
