Listen: Transportation section. Pete Buttigieg, Senator Ed Markey, on the actions the government can take to improve the airline.
Delays. Cancellations. Passengers stuck in the wrong city, bags stuck where they fell.
Pandemic staff reductions and the exacerbated by a mandatory retirement age have delayed and canceled thousands of flights. After a $ 50 billion bailout during the pandemic, why does airline services seem even worse?
Today, On Point: Can We Expect to Improve Air Travel?
Guests
William J. McGee, Senior Fellow for Aviation and Travel at the American Economic Liberties Project. Raymond LaHood was the only consumer advocate for the Secretary of Transportation’s Future Aviation Advisory Committee. Author of Attention All Passagers: The Airlines’ Dangerous Descent and How to Reclaim Our Skies. (@WilliamJMcGee)
Also Featured
Senator Ed Markey, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. On the same subject : 🔒 Rhonda Walker: What I Learned From My Recent Air Travel Nightmare. Chairman of the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate and Nuclear Safety; and the Subcommittee on East Asian, Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy. (@SenMarkey)
sec. Peter Buttigieg, U.S. Secretary of Transportation. (@PeteButtigieg)
Mike Richards, pilot of a commercial airline.
Transcript: Highlights From The Show’s Open
REBECCA: Hi, this is Rebecca from Buffalo, calling from New York. My family of five, in late March 2022, were traveling. See the article : Air Canada has announced a major flight reduction due to the chaos of unprecedented travel. My husband and I, with our four-year-old, our three-year-old and our one-year-old. And while we know that traveling with young children is a natural risk, what we experienced at Tampa Airport in late March was above the void.
MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Far beyond. Rebecca’s day of travel began with a notification from Southwest Airlines, saying her family’s flight might be delayed, but it was not canceled. So she, her husband, and these three little ones dared to fly to Tampa, Florida airport.
REBECCA: We finally got to the airport, we were showing the flight on time. So we checked in our luggage, which is, as you can imagine, including three car seats, a baby sleeping pack and a game and many other children’s equipment. With the return of our rental car. We sat in the terminal, it was crowded for a long time that day, and we finally saw that several delays started to pile up.
Not only with our flight, but also with the flights around us.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, if you passed by an airport recently, you saw the scene. Exhausted passengers on long lines of customer service while trying to get help over the phone do so for two hours. That was Rebecca, on the Southwest phone for hours. The delays were allegedly due to a thunderstorm that passed through Tampa. But Rebecca says he was later told that he had a technical error in the Southwest that morning that caused delays.
REBECCA: I was very disappointed because they weren’t more transparent that day. From the first flight of the day, things seem to be going wrong. You know, personally, what our family endured was a lack of food for the kids, and where to sleep. And we ran out of formula for the kids, and we literally had nowhere to go. So for me, being the mother of a young family, it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. Because … the truth is, my husband and I weren’t sure what to do that day.
CHAKRABARTI: The delayed flight was canceled. It took them two more hours to return the bags and car seats. Good luck? A family member was ready to drive for an hour and a half to pick them up at the airport and pick them up. It took four more days to stay on the flight home to Southwest Buffalo.
So Rebecca is just one of many listeners who called us with stories from unfriendly skies. But people keep flying. In fact, demand has risen. The companies operated 26% more flights in March 2022 than in March 2021. But up to consumer complaints, 300% more than previous pandemic levels, according to the Department of Transportation. So we spoke to the man who runs that department, Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
We need to make sure that these issues are resolved so that we first have less of these cancellations and delays.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: The most important message that the flying public needs to hear is that we have turned our backs on you. Look, sometimes there is just one situation, such as a weather event that will cause cancellations and delays. But other times, it’s issues that are in someone’s hands. And we need to make sure that these problems are solved so that we have fewer cancellations and delays in the first place. Then, in the event of cancellations and delays, we will ensure that the airlines meet their responsibilities to take care of you.
In the event of cancellations and delays, we will ensure that the airlines comply with their responsibilities to take care of you.
CHAKRABARTI: To be clear, the U.S. government has already taken care of the airlines. When the pandemic effectively closed air travel in March 2020, Congress quickly sent a $ 54 billion aid package to airlines, as we noted.
Since then the request has been returned. No service levels. Cancellation rates and delays have been record highs. By the way, Secretary Buttigieg suffered one of these denials. His flight, along with another 1,400, evaporated from the departures board on a Friday last month. Buttigieg is encouraged, however, that the airlines improved on the July 4 holiday.
BUTTIGIEG: The cancellation rate was around 3%, which is still too high compared to what you would expect in a normal year. We know it’s not a normal year. Pandemic shock waves are passing through every part of the economy, including our aviation system. But these airlines, which have received a lot of taxpayer funding to keep the system resilient, need to do their job. We will do our part.
These airlines, which have received a lot of taxpayer funding to keep the system resilient, need to do their job. We will do our part.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, what does it really mean to do their part for the airlines, for the airport authorities, for the agencies that regulate them? It seems that despite how many dollars are made by airlines, ticket prices go up and service quality trends go down. Why does this continue to happen with American air travel? Because these conflicting trend lines do not make for a resilient system. Well, today, Bill McGee has joined us. He is a senior member of the American Economic and Liberties Project for aviation and travel.
BILL McGEE: Hello. Thank you so much for being with me.
CHAKRABARTI: Have you ever seen so much attention in delays and cancellations in your history, understanding the airlines we are seeing now?
McGEE: No, I’ve never seen a summer like this, and I’ve been in the airline industry for 37 years. I started working in airlines in 1985. I worked in airline flight operations, so I was in the belly of the beast. I was one of those who canceled flights and rescheduled flights and fixed flights. And then after seven years in the airline industry, I started writing about the industry. And then, for the last 13 years, I’ve been working for consumers. I have never seen a summer like this. I don’t think anyone has ever done that. In fact, we are here in an unknown territory.
CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Take us to the belly of the beast. And I’d love to hear more about the experience I had in the 80s and 90s. What really happens when someone in your position has to cancel or delay flights? How does that work?
McGEE: Of course. Well, you know, it was about 35 years ago, but it seems like it was about 3,500 years ago, considering how many changes there were in the industry. It was a much different industry then and there was a lot more customer care. Now, I don’t want to be the one who makes a poetic wax about the past and tells the good old days. There are a lot of things wrong in the industry then and now.
But let me tell you what has happened in the last 20 years, largely driven by consolidations and mergers, that we have a smaller airline in 2022 than we ever had since the first Tampan airline ticket was sold in 1914. We have a broken industry. There is no other way to say it. But I think it’s very critical for us to talk today about not only how the airline industry is breaking down, but also how the regulatory model is being broken.
The Department of Transportation, which oversees the industry, has broken that pattern. We heard from Secretary Buttigieg. DOT said he has our backs. Sorry. With all due respect, the DOT has not been on the backs of passengers. They have been around for many years. And I’m happy to dive into that. But in answer to your question, you know, at one time, it was a different model, first and foremost, because the planes weren’t as full as they are now.
With all due respect, the Department of Transportation has not been on the backs of passengers.
We are studying what the industry calls load factors, the percentage of seats occupied in aircraft. We want to break all the time records set by airline companies when they were troop carriers in World War II. The planes are fuller than ever. The system operates at full capacity, almost every 24/7 weeks. And that’s not how transportation systems are designed. It’s not about how highways are designed. It’s not how subways are designed, or trains or buses. It’s definitely not how airlines are designed.
When I worked in the industry, the average loads in the entire system were seventy high, seventy low. So, you know, for every three seats, there was one or more unoccupied.
CHAKRABARTI: Have you hung me here for a second and I’m sorry to interrupt, but I want to clarify one thing you said earlier. When you say that the industry is smaller than it has ever been, you mean it in terms of consolidation and in terms of the number of companies that operate.
CHAKRABARTI: Yes. OK. Yes. I wanted people to be clear about that. But we’ll get to that a little bit later about consolidation. But we’ve heard from so many listeners about our experiences this summer as well as the spring. And I want to share most of their stories. So this is Kim Cruz. He was returning home from Boston’s Logan Airport to Gainesville, Florida.
KIM CRUZ: My flight was delayed from Logan. The door agent said it was because there was no crew to clean the plane. So we sat down for a while instead of boarding. And then the weather came in, which pushed us back, I don’t know, for another hour and a half. We took to the air late because the track was closed during that time. Now, keep in mind that if the plane had been cleaned in time, we would have left on time. And I would make the connection at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta.
CHAKRABARTI: Now, that connection he didn’t make was also the last flight of the day from Atlanta to Gainesville.
CRUZ: So I stayed in Atlanta. And the airline that was Delta said it wasn’t their fault for the weather around Logan. If they had cleaned the plane on time, we would have left on time and I would not have stayed at Atlanta airport overnight. Repeating it soon was something I didn’t care about. So they would rather have a full staff so that flights can be made on time, no matter what the weather.
CHAKRABARTI: Now that’s … a story for the audience. We have tried to understand or better understand why all these delays occur. And so we turned to Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, who has been advocating for consumer aircraft for a long time. And he says the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee has some data that shows airlines control more delays than publicly suggested.
ED MARKEY: Airlines control more than 40% of four-month delays. We should know what the airlines did to deal with these problems and how much information they provided to the consumer — there could be problems — enough time for the person flying to make an alternative plan.
Airlines control more than 40% of four-month delays. To deal with these problems we should know what the airlines did.
CHAKRABARTI: So, Bill McGee, we have 30 seconds left in this first segment. Do airlines accurately report how many delays and the reasons for these delays?
McGEE: I think there’s a very reasonable doubt about what the airlines are reporting. This is a very opaque industry. We rely on the honor system to let them know of their own delays. And there is ample evidence that they accuse the weather and air traffic control of delays under their control, especially staff problems.
This is a very opaque industry. We rely on the honor system to let them know of their own delays.
‘I Don’t Know How They’re Sustainable’: Pilot Mike Richards Reflects On Airline Staffing Issues
MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: I want to go deeper into the part of the staffing problem that we mentioned earlier. Because it is one of the main pans of the root problem. On the same subject : Travel in the fourth of July: Flight cancellations continue as the holiday approaches. As the pandemic escalated, airlines, a couple of years ago, chose to reduce the number of pilots on their payroll. And not just pilots, but other employees as well.
But for a moment we will focus on the riders, as thousands of riders were offered early retirement. In April 2020, 700 American Airlines pilots approved advanced retirement packages. And nearly 5,000 pilots accepted voluntary leave offers. That’s 5,000 of the nearly 15,000 pilots employed by Americans at the time.
Mike Richards is a pilot for a budget airline, Allegiant Air, and we spoke to him while he was on family vacation in Utah, which is his first vacation in more than two years. And Mike decided to take it, even begging Allegiant pilots to take extra flights.
MIKE RICHARDS: I think that’s really it right now. Everyone wants to get out and go do something, all at once. I just received an email saying they went to our union and they told me: We want to pay you 300% to receive anything, anything else in your schedule. That’s a lot. 300%. And they tried to say: This is the fault of your union. They said no. But the unions say we have been negotiating the contract for a year and we have hardly moved anything. So we don’t want to negotiate a small stop to get through the summer. We want them to sit down and negotiate a real contract that is competitive with our members and get that. I don’t want to sit back and waste time spending the summer. So I could say that at least our management is concerned with staff levels and everything else.
Several friends have left in recent months. I know there are several more conversations. So you know the climate is tough for sure. It seems that a lot of very urgent decisions were made when the pandemic started. I saw planes parked at various airports in the country. Kansas City had what looked like a full ramp full of unused aircraft. And I’m sure there was a lot of panic and fear when things will get better? How long will it take to recover anything? Well, it recovered pretty quickly. And now your top and most experienced pilots have retired. And, you know, you just aggravated the problem of lack that was at our door.
So in many cases, a lot of airlines have to remember after you leave, which would cause big training problems as soon as a certain amount of time has passed without flying, or without operating or losing check trips or training events. , you should re-enter and re-classify.
Our airline was licensed. I think it lasted a month or two. And then they were reminded. But yes, I’m sure they’ll regret that decision. When those pilots looked around and said, isn’t anyone else licensed? We did. Now that everyone is looking for a pilot, well, if there was a bit of an enemy where they said, why did this airline leave me? You know, and they’re being applied elsewhere. So our airline is tightening wear, very seriously.
… We barely keep up with the riders coming out. As there is supply and demand, it seems that the main contracts of the airline are very competitive, very nice. And, you know, that’s where the boys are going. It’s a very tough thing to do for any other airline that wants to not only attract new pilots for future growth, but also retention.
It’s not going to be an easy fix for riders, but it’s something they’ve been doing for 30 years or more now, you know. There’s always been talk of that, and they’ve always found a way to get that going. And now they don’t have many ways to get away with it. All of our airlines merged and consolidated. Once we raise age. I think we could do it again. I love my company. I love the people I work with, but I don’t know. The levels of wear we’re seeing, I don’t know how durable they are.
CHAKRABARTI: That’s Mike Richards. He is an Allegiant Air pilot based in Orlando, Florida.
As if the 2022 summer trips weren’t bad enough, the July 4th holiday has arrived, and experts say it will probably be the busiest trip of the year so far. Travel app Hopper says it expects 2.7 million passengers to overflow at airports on Thursday and Friday, which would be equivalent to the 2019 level.
What will an airline do If they cancel your flight?
Normally, if the flight is canceled most airlines will book you for the next flight available to your destination at no extra cost. However, for the reason that the flight is canceled, it may be difficult to find seats on a new flight and significantly delay the arrival time.
Do airlines have to compensate for canceled flights? The airline must compensate you for a canceled flight if you are notified less than 14 days before the original scheduled departure date. However, no compensation is required if the airline proves that the exceptional circumstances (e.g., weather) caused the cancellation.
What happens when the airlines cancels your flight?
If the airline cancels your flight, you will be accommodated on a later flight or, if you decide not to travel, you are entitled to a full refund under federal law. If the flight has had multiple stops, the unused portion of the flight will be refunded.
Is it legal for an airlines to cancel a flight?
In the following situations, consumers have the right to a refund of the ticket price and / or associated fees. Canceled flight: The consumer has the right to a refund if the airline cancels a flight, for whatever reason, and if the consumer chooses not to travel.
Who is responsible if flight is Cancelled?
Claim compensation for a canceled flight You are legally entitled to compensation if the cancellation is the responsibility of the airline and the two apply: the alternate flight delays your arrival by 2 hours or more. your flight was canceled less than 14 days before departure.
How many flights are Cancelled per year?
| Feature | Thousands of cancellations |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 281.03 |
| 2019 | 134.93 |
| 2018 | 116.58 |
| 2017 | 82.69 |
What percentage are canceling flights? “In normal times, one day or less is an average day of U.S. airline cancellations,” Bangs says, noting that 2019, the busiest year on record, saw an average cancellation rate of 2%. â € œBut so far in 2022, we are seeing an average of 3%, â € he says.
Why are there so many canceled flights?
Thousands of flights have been canceled in the U.S. as air travel broke a pandemic record on the fourth weekend in July. The Americans did not allow them to have high gas prices and the chaos of the airports at home this July 4th.
Why are flights being cancelled in the us?
It has also been noted that airlines have thousands of fewer employees than in 2019, which has sometimes led to flight cancellations. In May, Alaska Airlines officials said, among other things, that the lack of a pilot had contributed to the disruption of their flight.
Why are so many flights being cancelled 2022?
In addition to higher demand, the persistent shortage of pilot carriers in the region has led to a reduction and cancellation of flights. The lack of weather, airport staff and sick staff with Covid also reduces traffic.
Do flights get cheaper closer to the day?
Specifically, airline tickets usually don’t come out cheaper on the date of departure. Instead, flights are usually the cheapest when you book between four months and three weeks before your departure date. According to the CheapAir.com 2019 Annual Aircraft Review, you can expect rates to rise after that period.
Are last minute flights cheaper or more expensive? Here’s what to remember: Last minute flights aren’t cheaper: on the contrary, they tend to get more expensive the closer they are to the departure date. If you have no other choice but to book at the last minute, use tools like Skyscanner’s “Everywhere Search” or lastminute.com.
Do airline prices drop last minute?
Another good rule for travelers wondering how to get a cheap last minute flight is that there is no secret time to get the perfect deal. But in general, the best prices tend to fall after less than three weeks of flight, according to Scott Keyes, founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights.
What time of day are flights cheapest?
Tuesday is the cheapest time to book midnight Passengers looking for flights at midnight on Tuesday save around 6% on flights, which is the cheapest time of the week to book. Overall, the flights were slightly cheaper at the beginning of the week (Monday to Wednesday) at midnight.
Do flights go down in price closer to the date?
Understanding why airline ticket prices change Specifically, airline tickets are usually not cheaper near the date of departure. Instead, flights are usually the cheapest when you book between four months and three weeks before your departure date.
What weather causes flight cancellations?
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the weather affects approximately 70% of flight delays. Thunderstorms, lightning, rain, fog, wind, snow and ice can cause take-off or landing flights.
At what wind speed do flights cancel? Crossed winds of over 40 mph and winds of over 10 mph can cause problems and stop commercial aircraft from taking off and landing. Sometimes it can be too windy to take off or land.
How do I know if my flight is Cancelled due to weather?
Manually check the status of your flight to travel within the previous 24 hours on your airline’s website (and check where the plane is coming from, if possible). Also, select flight notifications with your airline and download the carrier app to your phone.
What causes flights to get canceled?
Flights may be delayed or canceled due to weather, maintenance issues or staffing issues. If you find yourself stranded at an airport with a canceled or delayed flight, here’s what you need to know.
