Mounting Flight Delays. Stranded Fliers. Airlines Struggle With Surging July 4 Demand - 04 iulie 2022

From Friday through Sunday, airlines that fly within, into, or out of the United States canceled more than 1,400 flights, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, stranding and angering some passengers headed for long-awaited summer vacations. In addition, more than 14,000 flights were delayed this holiday weekend, according to the site’s data. Some airlines seemed to be struggling to handle passenger volume that approached or in some cases even exceeded prepandemic levels. On Friday, the Transportation Safety Administration screened more passengers — 2.49 million people — than on any other day this year. That surpassed the 2.18 travelers screened on July 1, 2019, before the pandemic. 

 Adding to the pressure on air carriers this weekend was a glitch in the pilot-scheduling system at American Airlines that enabled pilots to drop thousands of flight assignments for July. The airline said on Saturday that it did not anticipate any “operational impact” because of the glitch. But the Allied Pilots Association, the union for American Airlines (US.AAL) pilots, said that the airline had unilaterally reinstated the dropped trips without the agreement of the pilots. The union said it was pressing the airline to pay an “inconvenience premium” to pilots affected by the scheduling system problems.

As the holiday weekend progressed, however, the spate of flight problems began to abate. By Sunday evening, Delta (US.DAL) had canceled just 1 percent of its flights, and just 15 percent of Southwest Airlines flights had been delayed, according to FlightAware. Southwest (US.LUV) said on Sunday that it was delivering “a safe, reliable experience across our network today with currently, less than 10 total cancellations” for the day.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/03/business/july-4-weekend-air-travel.html