Delta cuts hundreds of flights
Travelers across the country are scrambling to figure out backup plans after Delta Air Lines canceled hundreds of flights amid the holidays.
First came the weather. On Wednesday, in response to a snowstorm in the Minneapolisst. Paul area, where Delta has a major hub, the airline proactively canceled more than 250 flights scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. Then because of staffing issues, Delta was forced to cancel approximately 100 more flights scheduled for Friday, Christmas Day.
The cancellations are a possible byproduct of the pandemic’s toll on travel demand, according to Chris Riggins, a Delta pilot and communications chairman of the Delta Air Lines Master Executive Council of the Air Line Pilots Association.
“Due to the downsizing of the airline and trying to manage the size of the workforce … there’s been some training issues that’s been created from moving pilots from airplane to airplane and getting them retrained,” Riggins says. “It’s basically a problem of trying to get the pilots to the right place at the right time.”
These issues weren’t made clear to impacted travelers, who took their frustrations to Twitter.
Delta ran into the need for cancellations over Thanksgiving as well, when the airline canceled more than 500 flights that week.
Almost 1.2 million people took to the skies in the U.S. on Wednesday, the most since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in March, despite warnings against large gatherings and travel during the holidays.
People have flocked to airports in the past week, according to Transportation Security Administration data. An average of more than 1 million people a day passed through TSA screening over the past week, which is a post-coronavirus record.
The passenger levels remain far below what was typical before the pandemic, when airlines routinely carried more than 2.5 million people a day during busy periods.