Airline passengers arrive at Chicago’s Midway International Airport on the first day of the July 4 holiday weekend on Friday.
Charles Rex Arbogast / AP
hide captions
switch captions
Charles Rex Arbogast / AP
Airline passengers arrive at Chicago’s Midway International Airport on the first day of the July 4 holiday weekend on Friday.
Charles Rex Arbogast / AP
The 4th of July holiday weekend is off to an explosive start with airport crowds squashing the numbers seen in 2019, before the pandemic hit.
Travelers across the US experienced hundreds of flight cancellations and several thousand delays on Friday, as much as they did earlier this week.
Patricia Carreno arrived at Los Angeles International Airport with friends only to find out that their Alaska Airlines flight to Mazatlan, Mexico, had been cancelled.
“We would probably drive down to Mexico — to Tijuana, the border — and just fly from there,” she said.
The Transportation Security Administration screened more than 2.4 million travelers at airport checkpoints on Thursday, 17% more than on the same Friday before July 4, 2019. Air travel US air force is likely to set a pandemic-era record at least once over the weekend.
Traffic on highways can also be crowded.
AAA predicts that nearly 48 million people will travel at least 50 miles or more from home over the weekend, slightly less than in 2019. AAA says car travel will set a record even if gas prices average The national average hovers around $5.
Leisure travel is back this year, and that means especially large crowds during the three-day weekend.
With many flights sold out over the weekend of July 4, airlines will struggle to find seats for passengers like Carreno whose flights have been cancelled. Airlines require customers to check flight status before arriving at the airport.
Travelers wait in a security line at Philadelphia International Airport ahead of the July 4 weekend in Philadelphia on Friday.
Matt Rourke / AP
hide captions
switch captions
Matt Rourke / AP
Travelers wait in a security line at Philadelphia International Airport ahead of the July 4 weekend in Philadelphia on Friday.
Matt Rourke / AP
If you were already at the airport when your flight was cancelled, “it’s time to show off your multitasking skills,” says Sebastian Modak, editor-in-chief of travel guide publisher Lonely Planet.
Modak recommends going straight to the airline helpdesk, checking the airline’s app on your phone and calling the airline’s customer service line – international numbers may be answered sooner US numbers for airlines that have both. He said driving or taking a bus or train would be a better option for shorter trips.
“There is no doubt that this will be a summer of travel delays, cancellations and disappointments,” he said.
By the early hours of Friday evening, airlines had canceled about 500 US flights and another 5,100 were delayed, according to FlightAware. Scattered thunderstorms in the New York City area make the number likely to rise. The tracking service said that between June 22 and Wednesday, at least 600 flights were canceled and between 4,000 and 7,000 flights delayed each day.
Aviation executives blame the recent spike in canceled flights on the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that runs the nation’s air traffic control system, but Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg object to that statement.
Passengers are stuck in the middle.
Mari Ismail, who flew into Atlanta on Friday, said it took a long time to check in and go through security before her flight from Baltimore.
“I got to my gate as soon as they started boarding, so it was a very long process,” she said.
Jordane Jeffrey said she booked a return trip from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Monday, vacation.
“I hope there are no delays because I work that evening,” she said.
Airlines sometimes overbook flights in the hope that some passengers won’t show up. When there are more passengers than seats, airlines will give cash or travel vouchers to those willing to take the next flight.
Travelers check in at Philadelphia International Airport on Friday.
Matt Rourke / AP
hide captions
switch captions
Matt Rourke / AP
Travelers check in at Philadelphia International Airport on Friday.
Matt Rourke / AP
Earlier this week, a columnist for Inc. magazine. wrote that Delta flight attendants were giving $10,000 in cash to people who would be disembarking waiting to take off from Grand Rapids, Mich.
Delta spokesman Anthony Black would neither confirm nor deny the journalist’s account, but he noted that the airline has raised the amount of compensation agents can offer in such cases to $9,950 in 2017. That move led to a public relations nightmare at United Airlines, as airport employees spilled blood and dragged a 69-year-old doctor off a sold-out plane – a case led to a lawsuit, secret settlement, and late-night TV jokes about United’s customer service.
Even with crowded holidaymakers at airports and on planes, the total number of people traveling by plane has yet to fully recover to pre-pandemic levels because of a slump in business and international travel. TSA screened 11% fewer people in June than in the same month of 2019.
Thursday marked only the 11th time since the pandemic began that the TSA tested more people than on the same day in 2019, and only the second since February.
Airlines can almost certainly carry more passengers if they have enough staff. Many US airlines have slashed their summer schedules after bad weather, stalled air traffic and enough staffing caused widespread cancellations over Memorial Day weekend.
Airlines paid thousands of furloughed workers in the early days of the pandemic, when air travel plummeted and airline revenues dried up. They have been recruiting recently, but it takes time to train pilots, who are particularly in short supply.
Now, airlines competing for key employees are offering double-digit pay increases to pilots who find themselves leveraged in negotiations over new contracts.
