Here's who to blame for airlines' cancellation chaos

A surge in Covid cases and severe winter storms created a miserable holiday travel season for hundreds of thousands of stranded airline passengers. But airlines' staffing cuts were also to blame for the 20,000 US flight that have been canceled over the last two weeks. Airlines went into the busiest travel period of the past two years with significantly fewer employees than they had before the pandemic hit in early 2020. That stretched staff too thin and left the airlines unable to adjust when a large number of employees tested positive for Covid and bad winter weather hit major airport hubs from Denver to Washington. So it shouldn't have come as a surprise that travel didn't go smoothly this holiday season. In fact, it was predicted by some industry experts. "Granted, Omicron wave was a swift surprise. However, it was made worse by a failure to plan for any hiccups, be it weather or virus," said Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines 737 pilot and spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, the union at the nation's largest airline. "Bottom line, management sold tickets it couldn't fulfill with any duress. It doesn't seem they stress-tested their ops plan." The airlines all said they were doing their best to accommodate passengers in the face of widespread problems. Many of the flights were canceled in advance to allow the greatest possible notice to passengers. For example, nearly 300 US flights originally scheduled for Wednesday have already been canceled. And all the airlines say they are doing what they can to hire the staffing needed so that they don't have future problems.<br/>