Time To Spare, Go By Air

The post-COVID era is proving an intractable nightmare from which the airline industry seems contemporaneously unable and unwilling to wake. Passenger volumes are up. Capacity is down. Pilots are in unprecedented demand, yet carriers are reluctant to negotiate new labor contracts. Commercial aircraft are selling like hotcakes, but they sit idle for want of crews. A herd of goats wandering a field of Astro-Turf would be less befuddled than today’s airline CEOs and boards.

The most conspicuous and off-putting symptom of the woes with which air-carriers are presently afflicted is flight delays—many of which metastasize into cancellations. So acute are the instances and so abundant the incidences of flight delay that Capitol Hill lawmakers are urging federal agencies to investigate whether airlines are engaging in unfair and deceptive business practices—alleging airlines knowingly schedule flights that cannot be fulfilled.

During the coronavirus madness, the U.S. federal government gave air carriers $54-billion in taxpayer money to retain pilots and staff—which subject carriers asserted were needed to fulfill flights and reduce delays and cancellations. Notwithstanding the funding and assurances from the airlines that jobs and capacity would be preserved, travelers have since contended with record numbers of flight delays, cancellations, and lost luggage—in response to which they’ve filed innumerable, largely unheeded, complaints.

According to the flight tracking website FlightAware, approximately five-hundred U.S. flights were cancelled and two-thousand delayed by midday Monday 08 August 2022. The previous day saw 950 flights cancelled and eight-thousand delayed.

Around 12% of flights originating at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on Sunday 07 August and Monday 08 August 2022 were cancelled by 12:00 CDT, and 45% of flights outbound from O’Hare were delayed.

Throughout the United States, Saturday 06 August 2022 saw a total of 657 flight cancellations and 7,267 delays.

American Airlines respectively canceled and delayed 4% and 24% of its Saturday flights. United had 4% of its Saturday flights canceled and 23% delayed, followed by Delta with 2% canceled and 22% delayed. A whopping 41% of JetBlue's and 36% of Southwest's Saturday flights were also delayed.

The punchline to the tasteless joke into which the contemporary airline industry has descended lies in the maddening fact that airfares have never been higher.  

FMI: www.flightaware.com