Analysis: Flight delays, cancellations mar US summer travel

Persistent staffing shortages, fewer flights and booming demand have cast a shadow on the busy July Fourth holiday weekend and the entire summer travel season. While the lifting of COVID-19 curbs and bottled-up travel demand are translating into the strongest summer since the pandemic for American carriers, frequent mass flight cancellations are creating chaos for their customers. US airlines have canceled more than 21,000 flights, or about 2.7% of the scheduled total since the Memorial Day holiday weekend in May, almost double last year's rate, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Flight delays are also higher than in 2021. Analysts and some industry executives don't see a meaningful improvement before fall when travel demand tends to slow down. On Tuesday, Delta warned of another round of disruptions during the July Fourth weekend when passenger traffic is projected to be the highest since before the pandemic. To mitigate the impact, it is allowing customers to rebook their trip for free. The Atlanta-based carrier has canceled about 5% of its scheduled flights in the past two weeks due to staffing, weather and ATC issues. The industry's struggle to ensure operational reliability despite repeated assurances shows the issues, which hobbled air travel last summer, have yet to be fixed. Carriers are still grappling with staffing shortages after letting go thousands of pilots at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Now, they have been aggressively hiring, with both Delta and United Airlines, for example, hiring 200 pilots a month.<br/>