Business: Airline delays hint at rough summer for travelers.

More than 2M people on multiple days screened in June and July

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

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

American Airlines is also grappling with a surge in delays, and it 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 on 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 hours-long 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 screaming and 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 un

ruly 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 Adminis

tration. 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 to 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 federally required training to refresh their skills and aren’t yet eligible to fly. When storms cause long delays, pilots can reach their FAA limit on the number of hours they are allowed to work, and there aren’t enough backups to

step in, 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.