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High demand, staff shortage bring air travel chaos

By Wei Wang

Posted August 2, 2022

Indiana’s weekly reported COVID-19 cases has dropped for seven straight weeks – the state only reported 3,412 new cases last week.

Experts blame high demand and staff shortages for ongoing air travel chaos. (Lauren Chapman/IPB News)

A rise in summer air travel is causing chaos at U.S. airports. Experts blame high demand and staff shortages.

Ahmed Abdelghany, associate dean at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, said many airlines and airports cut staffing levels to almost zero during the pandemic, leaving them unprepared for summer travelers.

“The recovery happened faster than what's expected, and this is what is the problem,” he said. “Most of the airlines didn't expect that recovery will be that fast.”

Major U.S. airlines cancelled nearly 12,000 flights across U.S. airports in May, making up 2% of all scheduled flights, according to the Department of Transportation’s latest Air Travel Consumer Report. May, 2021 saw 2,350 and 0.5% of flights canceled.

The same report shows 5.6 of every 1,000 checked bags were lost, damaged, delayed or stolen this past May, compared to 3.8 last May and 2.8 the year before. Travelers in the U.S. and Europe have reported their bags being lost for weeks, sometimes to a different corner of the world.

Bill McGee, senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, said last-minute flight cancellations this summer were the worst he’d seen in 37 years. He said passengers should avoid checking bags for the rest of the summer.

“I've never seen a summer that has been so terrible from an operations standpoint for consumers and for passengers,” he said.

McGee said he suspects airlines are knowingly offering more flights than their staffing levels can handle. He worked as an aircraft dispatcher for seven years at Pan American World Airways and said airlines should take more responsibility for the summer cancellations.

“If they don't have the capacity to operate the flights, then they should not be doing this,” he said. “They should not be in the reservation systems, and they should not be collecting money from them.”

McGee said he anticipates air travel challenges to continue into the Labor Day weekend.

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