Airline cancellations could get worse this weekend
The crew shortages weren’t supposed to happen. Airlines have been staffing up and bringing back employees from cost-cutting leaves of absence.
Airline payrolls numbered 718,000 in October, the most recent data available from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, up from 669,000 a year earlier.
But the industry says the omicron variant of the coronavirus is sidelining its teams, and successfully asked federal officials to cut back the guidelines for isolation and quarantine.
Please rebook
Alaska Airlines is pleading with passengers who do not need to travel this week to rebook.
“We strongly urge flyers with non-essential travel scheduled before January 2, 2022, to consider changing their travel to a later date using our flexible travel policy,” the airline said. “With more snow expected and limited seats available during an already busy holiday week, we’re not able to re-accommodate most guests for at least three days.”
The hold time for customer service calls at Alaska are 20 hours and it says callers without urgent issues should wait “until next week.”
It canceled 14% of Thursday flights and said winter weather is causing it to cancel one out of every five flights at its primary hub in Seattle to “allow for the additional time it takes to deice aircraft.”
Mounting cancellations
The airline thought earlier this week that the number of crewmember callouts due to the coronavirus was under control. It canceled only two flights on Christmas and one flight the next day, Sunday, because of covid. But now it is seeing “a surge in the number of sick calls from Omicron”
Budget leisure carrier Allegiant Air canceled nearly 100 flights, or 18% of its schedule, on Thursday, according to FlightAware. Allegiant warned customers telephone hold times were “unusually long.”
Severe weather
The weather impacts aren’t limited to snow and ice. The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged the jet stream weather pattern over the US was “stronger than usual” on Tuesday, reaching 170 knots in the air above the Great Lakes. A strong jet stream can slow west-bound travel and speed up east-bound flights at the high altitudes where aircraft operate.
Southwest canceled 14 flights on Thursday and American Airlines canceled only 4, according to FlightAware — both less than 1% of each carrier’s schedule.
The Transportation Security Administration told CNN it has “adequate staff to cover flight schedules and passenger volumes.”
