Southwest, American delays hint at a hard summer for travelers

Staff shortages and bad weather are creating backlogs across the board

This summer is already shaping up to be a difficult one for air travelers.

Southwest Airlines customers have struggled with delays and hundreds of canceled flights in the past three weeks due to computer problems, staff shortages and bad weather.

American Airlines is also grappling with a surge in delays and has trimmed its schedule through mid-July, at least in part because it doesn’t have enough pilots, according to the pilots’ union.

At the same time, the number of Americans getting on planes is at a pandemic-era high. Just under 2.2 million travelers were screened at U.S. airports Friday, the highest number since early March 2020.

Travelers are posting photos of long airport lines and describing painful flights.

“It was ridiculously crowded,” Tracey Milligan said of airports after a round trip from her New Jersey home to Miami last week.

Milligan and her 6-year-old daughter endured hourslong delays on both legs of the trip. Before the flight to Florida, she said, JetBlue agents first told passengers there was a discrepancy with the plane’s weight, then they were missing three crew members because the airline was short-staffed, then there was a weather delay.

“I really wanted to start … cursing everybody out, but that doesn’t get you anywhere, and security will come and remove you from the plane,” she said.

At least the passengers on Milligan’s flights kept their cool. Airlines have seen a surge in unruly passengers and some experts predict it will get worse this summer as planes become even more crowded.

There have been more than a dozen days in June and July when more than 2 million travelers went through U.S. airports, according to figures from the Transportation Security Administration. Airlines say that domestic leisure travel is back to 2019 levels, although the lack of business travelers means that, overall, the number of passengers over the past week is still down slightly compared with the same days in 2019.

For the July Fourth weekend, U.S. airlines scheduled nearly twice as many flights between Thursday and Monday as they did over the same days last year, according to data from aviation researcher Cirium.

The weekend highlights the rapid turnaround boosting an industry that was fighting for survival last year. The recovery has been faster than many expected — including, apparently, the airlines themselves.

Since the start of the pandemic, U.S. airlines have received $54 billion in federal aid to help cover payroll expenses. In return, they were prohibited from furloughing or laying off workers. However, they were allowed to persuade tens of thousands of employees to take buyouts, early retirement or leaves of absence.

Now, some are finding they don’t have enough people in key roles, including pilots.

As Southwest officials braced for crowded flights over the holiday weekend, they offered double pay for flight attendants and other employees who agree to extra work through Wednesday.

“The staffing shortage is across the board. On the pilot side, it’s a training backlog,” said Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. “Southwest came into the summer with very little margin.”

Murray said many pilots coming back from leave are still getting required training to refresh their skills and aren’t yet eligible to fly. When storms cause long delays, pilots can reach their FAA limit of the number of hours they can work, and there aren’t enough backups, he said. On top of that, he said, Southwest pushed for an “aggressive” summer schedule to capitalize on rising travel demand.

Since June 14, Southwest has averaged more than 1,300 daily flights delays — a staggering 40% of its schedule — according to figures from tracking service Flightaware. com.

Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said most delays were caused by weather and, with fewer flights than before the pandemic, it’s harder to recover from long thunderstorms.

At American Airlines, unions say labor shortages are contributing to delays and the scrubbing of up to 80 flights a day from the schedule through mid-July. In echoes of Southwest, the pilots’ union at American said management did not act quickly enough to retrain 1,600 pilots who were temporarily furloughed, then rehired last year, or replace the 1,000 who retired.