Thousands of flights have been cancelled this weekend as people prepare to travel for the Juneteenth holiday on Monday. The cancellations are caused by labour shortages, the worldwide consequences of Ukraine’s crisis, and weather problems. According to flight-tracking service Flight Aware, almost 6,000 flights were cancelled or delayed on Friday and Saturday.
According to Flight Aware statistics, 1,700 flights were cancelled and 8,800 were delayed on Thursday inside or from the United States. A total of 950 flights scheduled for Sunday have been cancelled, with American Airlines, Delta, Spring Airlines, and China Eastern among the companies with the most cancellations. ‘ Air travellers should be able to expect dependable service when demand recovers to pre-pandemic levels,’ transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted on Friday.
Many airlines have been cancelling flights on a daily basis in recent months due to an ongoing labour shortage. Over the Memorial Day weekend, more than 2,500 flights were cancelled, disturbing the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of travellers. In an open letter on June 2, two senators encouraged Buttigieg to hold the airlines accountable for the Memorial Day weekend inconvenience.
The letter, signed by Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal and Edward Markey, stated that they were aware that airlines were taking steps to increase staffing. However, they stated that ‘thousands of travellers are still arriving at airports only to have their flights cancelled at the last minute’. Travelers’ plans for the Fourth of July are suddenly much more dubious.
Delta pilots expressed their frustration with the interruption in an open letter on Thursday, saying they were ‘flying a record amount of overtime’. Delta said in May that it will cancel around 100 flights per day in July and August in order to minimise inconvenience. Other airlines, notably American, which has cancelled around 100 regional routes owing to a pilot shortage, have been compelled to follow suit.
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