While air travel was expected to have its share of hassles this summer, it has turned into a nightmare for many fliers. In recent weeks, travelers have been hit with long delays caused by everything from labor shortages and seasonal thunderstorms to computer snafus.
The number of flights canceled in the first 15 days of June was up a whopping 91 percent compared with the same period last year, and the number of flights that were excessively late — more than 45 minutes — jumped 61 percent, according to flightstats.com. Overall, 70.7 percent of all U.S. flights arrived on time from June 1 through June 15, compared with 79 percent last year.
“I fly a lot, and I’ve never seen it this bad this systematically. It’s like the Italian train system,” said Nick Abbott, a vice president at Intelliden who was stuck in Philadelphia for two days after his flight on US Airways was delayed and then canceled last week.
Northwest Airlines, battling with labor unrest, canceled 352 flights on Saturday and Sunday — more than the carrier canceled in the entire month of June last year, according to FlightStats. With airplanes booked full on a busy summer weekend, grounding 13 percent of flights left many travelers stranded, and problems continued Monday. By 11 a.m., 100 flights already had been canceled.
Just a week ago, Northwest’s pilots union passed a “no confidence” resolution on management, citing pilot shortages this summer as well as millions of dollars in executive compensation. Northwest said in a statement that the airline was experiencing crew shortages after storms earlier in the month increased duty time, and was relaxing ticket restrictions to accommodate passengers as quickly as possible.
The problem may get worse this weekend because crew shortages typically worsen at the end of the month. Some pilots called in to fly extra trips hit federal limits on monthly duty time and aren’t available for trips.
Thomas Adams was trying to get his family of four from Orange County, Calif., to Louisville, Ky., with a connection in Minneapolis last weekend when Northwest canceled their first flight. The family ended up driving about 90 miles to San Diego to catch flights on Delta Air Lines after a Northwest telephone operator told Adams that the flight crew was over its allowed flight hours and no other crew was available. Last Wednesday, an employee at United Airlines made a mistake that crippled a crucial computer system and its backup for two hours in the morning. Because airlines schedule planes so tightly, they can almost never recover from early problems on the same day. On June 20, only 30 percent of United’s flights arrived on time; about half of all flights were more than 45 minutes late, according to FlightStats. A couple weeks earlier, on June 8, a Federal Aviation Administration computer snafu, along with some thunderstorms in the Northeast, left planes parked on taxiways at Newark Liberty International Airport like cars for sale at an auto dealership.
At airports in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Chicago, only about half of all flights took off or arrived at a gate on time that day, according to FlightStats. (FlightStats, a unit of Conducive Technology in Portland, Ore., offers flight histories at its Web site, flagging chronically late flights for travelers, and provides alert services on delays.)
Even when travelers get to their destination, it doesn’t always mean the woes are over. United lost National Public Radio host Scott Simon’s luggage on a flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas last week. After filling out paperwork in Las Vegas, Simon was given a phone number and e-mail address to contact the San Francisco baggage office — with the caution that San Francisco never answers the phone or responds to e-mail.
More than 30 calls later, Simon, an elite-level frequent flier on United, has yet to reach a United baggage official in San Francisco, or learn anything about the fate of his baggage, which includes irreplaceable items.
Calls to the airline’s main toll-free line haven’t yielded any information, either. American Express also is trying to track down information, a service for its platinum customers, but hasn’t gotten through to United, either.
“It’s incredibly frustrating,” Simon said. “I know they are overworked, and it seems they have decided the best way to avoid more work is to not answer the phone or respond to e-mail.”
A spokeswoman for United says the airline is trying to find Simon’s lost bag.
Several airlines admitted staffing levels cut during years of financial restructuring haven’t caught back up with resurging travel demand, and some were rushing to hire pilots, baggage handlers and airport agents before the summer travel rush.
Staff shortages mean long lines, more lost luggage and little help when things go awry..
