CHICAGO Jan 1 (U.S.): More canceled flights frustrated air travelers on the last day of 2021, and looked set to inconvenience hundreds of thousands over New Year’s Weekend.
Airlines have blamed many of the cancellations on a crew shortage linked to a sudden rise in COVID-19 infections, along with winter weather in parts of the United States, the Associated Press reports.
United Airlines, which has suffered the most cancellations among the largest US airlines, has agreed to pay bonuses to pilots to fix a staff shortage.
By early Friday evening on the East Coast, airlines had canceled more than 1,550 US flights — about 6% of all scheduled flights — and about 3,500 flights around the world, according to tracking service FlightAware.
That pushed the total US cancellations since Christmas Eve to more than 10,000 and surpassed the previous one-day peak this holiday season, which was 1,520 on Dec. 26.
The turmoil comes as travel numbers climb higher as the New Year’s weekend approaches. Since December 16, an average of more than two million passengers per day have passed through security checkpoints at US airports, an increase of nearly 100,000 per day since November and nearly doubling last December.
Led by Southwest and United, airlines have already canceled 1,500 US flights on Saturday – about 700 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, where forecasts called for a winter storm – and another 700 on Sunday.
Canceled flights started rising from a few hundred a day shortly before Christmas, most notably United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and JetBlue Airways.
On Friday, United canceled more than 200 flights, or 11% of its schedule – and that did not include cancellations at its regional United Express branch. CommutAir, which operates several United Express flights, has canceled a third of its schedule, according to FlightAware.
United decided to spend more money to fill the empty cockpit. The airline has reached an agreement with the pilots’ union to pay 3.5 times the regular wages for pilots taking extra flights through Monday and triple the pay for flights between Tuesday and January 29, according to a memo from Brian Quigley, United’s vice president. Flight operations.
JetBlue canceled more than 140 flights, or 14% of its schedule, and Delta grounded more than 100 flights, or 5% of its flights, by midday Friday. Allegiant, Alaska, Spirit and regional airlines SkyWest and Mesa have washed up at least 9% of their flights.
FlightAware reported fewer cancellations in the Southwest, 3%, and the US, 2%.
The virus has also infected more federal air traffic controllers. The Federal Aviation Administration said more of its employees had tested positive – it did not provide numbers on Friday – which could prompt controllers to reduce flight sizes and “may lead to delays during busy periods.”
While leisure travel within the United States has returned to nearly pre-pandemic levels, international travel remains low, and the government is giving travelers a new reason to reconsider trips abroad. On Thursday, the State Department warned Americans that if they tested positive for the coronavirus while in a foreign country, it could mean an expensive quarantine until the test result comes back negative.
Since March 2020, US airlines have received $54 billion in federal relief to keep employees on payroll during the pandemic. Congress has barred airlines from furloughing workers but has allowed them to offer incentives to quit or take extended leave of absence — and it has done a lot. Airlines have about 9% fewer workers than they did two years ago.
Kurt Ebenhuch, a former airline spokesperson and later advocate for travel consumers, said airlines have aggressively added flights, cut staff too small, and overestimated the number of employees who will return to work after leave of absence. It was all done, he said, “in pursuit of profit…and their customers paid for it, big time.”
Many airlines are now rushing to hire pilots, flight attendants and other workers. In the meantime, some are cutting back on the schedules they can no longer work on. Southwest did so before the holiday, with JetBlue cutting flights until mid-January, and Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific suspending freight and reducing passenger flights because there weren’t enough pilots.
Other forms of transmission are also affected due to the significant increase in virus cases. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday it is monitoring more than 90 cruise ships due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The health agency has warned people not to go on cruises, even if they have been fully vaccinated against the virus.
Delta variable residuals and the emergence of a new omicron variable have pushed the seven-day circulating average of new daily COVID-19 cases in the United States to more than 350,000, nearly three times the rate it was just two weeks ago, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.