U.S. investigators said in a report Friday that an increase in flight cancellations as travel recovered from the pandemic was due mostly to factors that airlines controlled, including cancellations for maintenance issues or lack of a crew.
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.The GAO said weather was the leading cause of cancellations in the two years before the pandemic, but the percentage of airline-caused cancellations began increasing in early 2021. From October through December 2021, airlines caused 60% or more of cancellations — higher that at any time in 2018 or 2019.
As travel rebounded, the airlines struggled to replace thousands of departed workers. They now have more workers than in 2019 — and the cancellation rate this year is lower than during the same period in 2019, according to data from tracking service FlightAware.Article content “Carriers have taken responsibility for challenges within their control and continue working diligently to improve operational reliability as demand for air travel rapidly returns,” said the spokeswoman, Hannah Walden. “This includes launching aggressive, successful hiring campaigns for positions across the industry and reducing schedules in response to the FAA’s staffing shortages.”
In 2019, Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines had the highest percentages of their own cancellations being caused by an airline-controlled issue — more than half of each carrier’s cancellations. In late 2021, they were joined by low-fare carriers Allegiant Air, Spirit Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Frontier, each of whom were responsible for 60% or more of their own total cancellations, according to GAO.
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