Southwest, American delays hint at hard summer for travelers

Southwest customers have struggled with thousands of delays and hundreds of canceled flights this month 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. Travelers are posting photos of long airport lines and describing painful flights. 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 10 days in June when more than 2 million travelers went through US airports, according to figures from the Transportation Security Administration. Airlines say that domestic leisure travel is nearly back to 2019 levels, although the lack of business travelers means that overall, the number of passengers over the past week is still down about 20% compared with the same days in 2019. The airlines were expecting a blockbuster July Fourth weekend, scheduling more than 100,000 US flights between July 1 and July 5. That was nearly twice the 58,000 that they offered over the same days last year, according to data from aviation researcher Cirium. July 1 was first time the TSA screened more people than on the same day in 2019.<br/>