Since holiday weekend travel began Thursday, airlines have canceled more than 2,200 U.S. flights and delayed another 25,000. Airports were full. More than 9 million fliers flocked to US airports between Thursday and Sunday, reaching a pandemic-era record of 2.49 million on Friday, according to Transportation Security Administration data. By late Monday afternoon on the East Coast, more than 2,200 U.S. flights had been delayed and more than 200 canceled, according to FlightAware. The good news: Those numbers have dropped sharply in recent days. Flying during the peak holiday season has always been challenging. Heavy crowds and summer storms can quickly overwhelm an airline’s operations. That was exacerbated this summer by shortages of pilots and other workers. “It’s not just in North America, it’s everywhere,” said John Grant, an analyst for OAG, a UK-based travel date provider. “It’s a combination of available resources and demand that is growing much faster than expected.” Grant said labor shortages in Europe and North America have affected airlines, their suppliers, including aircraft feeders and fuels, airports and air traffic controllers. He sees no reason to believe the situation will improve anytime this summer. In the US, the cancellation rate in the past two weeks is up 59% from the same period in 2019, before the pandemic, likely due to a combination of weather, staff shortages and air traffic issues. But the rate of delayed flights is slightly worse than it was last summer before the pandemic — 19.7 percent then, 21.5 percent now, according to FlightAware numbers. While some of the disruption was due to bad weather, especially along the east coast for part of the weekend, airlines also made inexcusable mistakes. American Airlines accidentally suspended pilot assignments for thousands of flights in July due to an error in its scheduling program. A spokesman for the airline said on Monday that the problem had been fixed and crew assignments had been restored for the “vast majority” of flights. He said the issue had no effect on the Fourth of July trip. Ed Sicher, the new president of the union that represents American pilots, said the airline had flouted their contract by unilaterally assigning pilots to about 80 percent of the affected flights. Sicher said the union and the airline are negotiating extra pay for pilots who had their trips dropped and then reinstated during “this disaster.”
