On the first official day of summer, nearly 1,300 Southwest Airline pilots gathered outside the Dallas Love Field airport to protest ongoing staff shortages, as travel chaos continued, with more than 200 flights across the United States canceled.
At the protest, the Southwest Pilots Association demanded better treatment for its pilots, calling it “the largest display of unity in Southwest Airlines history.”
It called the Dallas protest a “informational picket” in an effort to raise awareness of pilot fatigue and stress caused by an ongoing pilot shortage, which it claims is to blame for massive delays and cancellations.
‘Our pilots have had to publicly address the fatigue issue with management, which is something we never want to do, but they’ve been tired and have been trying everything they can,’ said Capt. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Pilots Association, to NBC DFW.
The main issue, he said, is pilot scheduling issues on connecting flights.
Murray said, “We’ve seen our company not really address a lot of operational problems.” ‘This has been going on for a long time.’
‘While we do need to hire pilots, the main issue right now is the scheduling efficiencies we’ve seen.’
Southwest Airlines cut nearly 20,000 flights from its summer schedule in April, including about a quarter of flights between Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
According to the Dallas Morning News, the airline had 2,200 fewer employees in 2021 than it did three years prior, despite hiring an additional 5,000 workers.
And among those who were working, many pilots are canceling shifts due to exhaustion, blaming it on erratic schedules caused by delays and cancellations.
Because it is against union rules to call in sick to attend a protest, none of the pilots at the demonstration on Tuesday were scheduled to work, and Southwest Airlines said in a statement to NBC DFW that it “does not anticipate any service disruption as a result of this single demonstration.”
‘Southwest Airlines respects our employees’ rights to express their opinions,’ the company said, adding, ‘We’ve maintained a legendary Southwest culture that honors our valued employees for 51 years.’
Despite this, over 200 flights were canceled on Tuesday due to staff shortages, record-high inflation, and rising gas prices, and over 1,000 flights were delayed within, entering, or leaving the United States.
Over 14,000 flights were canceled over the weekend, leaving thousands of people stranded at airports.
Murray said at the protest on Tuesday that he wants passengers to know that the pilots are on their side during this travel chaos caused by the COVID pandemic.
According to KDFW, he said at the demonstration, “We’re tired of saying “I’m sorry” at every flight.”
However, he claims that pilots are overworked as a result of the staffing shortages, as they try to meet the never-ending travel demand.
‘Over the last year, our pilots have lost almost 20,000 days off, which equates to more than 50 years of involuntary flying on off days,’ he told NBC DFW. ‘And, once again, fatigue accumulates.’
‘So it adds up, and the more flying there is, the more coverage is required.’
Murray hopes that the large picket will draw the company’s attention to the need to renegotiate pilot contracts, and Southwest Airlines confirmed that contract negotiations are ongoing in a statement.
The Delta Air Lines Pilot Association staged a similar protest last week at Delta’s annual shareholders meeting in New York City, and the protest on Tuesday was similar.
The union demanded that the airline match the number of flights with current pilot staffing “to ensure safe, reliable service for our customers,” according to a tweet.
A total of 14,000 flights were canceled across the United States over the holiday weekend, leaving passengers stranded at airports overnight.
As a pandemic-high number of travelers passed through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints on Thursday, more than 1,700 flights were canceled, and 1,100 flights were canceled on Friday.
According to CNBC, more than 6,300 flights were delayed entering or leaving the United States on Saturday, with 859 flights canceled, with more than 900 flights canceled on Sunday.
More than 3,600 flights were delayed or canceled within the United States on Monday, with over 380 being canceled.
According to the Wall Street Journal, about 3% of scheduled flights were canceled this month, up 1% from a year ago, and the total number of cancellations increased 16 percent to 13,581 flights from a year ago.
Travel demand has risen to pre-pandemic levels, according to airlines, but staffing remains strained following mass COVID-19-related layoffs.
At the same time, rising interest rates are boosting the US dollar, while gas prices are skyrocketing.
Meanwhile, the US trade-weighted real exchange rate index, which was established in 2006, is at an all-time high, and the benchmark Brent oil price is hovering around $115 per barrel.
‘It’s not good for airlines at all.’ Tony Webber, a former chief economist at Australia’s Qantas Airways, said at the International Air Transport Association annual meeting in Doha, Qatar, “It’s the perfect storm.”
The inflated value of the US dollar is driving up global oil prices, aircraft purchase and leasing costs, maintenance costs, and, in some cases, debt for non-American airlines.
‘It’s painful,’ Korean Air Lines Co Ltd Chief Executive Walter Cho said of the strong dollar, which is trading at its highest level against the won in more than a decade.
‘We owe a lot of money in US dollars, and we have to pay interest on it.’ On the sidelines of an airline industry gathering in Doha, he said, “Interest is low, but at this exchange rate, it might as well be 10%.”
The cost increase for most non-US airlines far outweighs the benefit of ticket sales to US-based customers converting to more local currency.
SpiceJet, an Indian low-cost carrier, warned last week that rising fuel prices and the depreciation of the rupee would force it to raise fares by 10 to 15%.
Fuel had previously accounted for 20% of Malaysia Airlines’ costs, but that had risen to 45 percent due to the weakening ringgit, according to Izham Ismail, the company’s CEO.
Meanwhile, American airline executives say they prefer a weaker dollar because it allows them to sell tickets in euros and other currencies to foreign customers at a higher conversion rate.
Hawaiian Airlines CEO Peter Ingram, for example, said the airline was keeping an eye on the yen, which was trading at 20-year lows, as it ramped up flights to Japan, which is traditionally Hawaii’s largest foreign tourism market.
‘At this point, it’s not a binding constraint on demand, but it’s something we’re certainly aware of because the vast majority of traffic on our flights, plus or minus 90%, is Japanese originating traffic,’ he said of the yen.
‘As a result, the exchange rate will inflate the cost of traveling to the United States.’
At the same time, demand is surging back to pre-pandemic levels, despite airline staffing levels remaining low as they try to recover from pandemic-era lows.
According to the Journal, the US recently lifted a pandemic-era restriction requiring people to test negative before boarding US-bound flights, and European destination bookings are nearly back to 2019 levels.
Because of a pilot shortage, American Airlines announced on Monday that service to Toledo, Ohio, Ithaca, New York, and Islip, New York will be discontinued beginning September 7.
Customers scheduled to fly after the route’s termination date are allegedly being contacted by the airline to ‘offer alternate arrangements.’
The company is also ‘extremely grateful for the care and service our team members provided’ at the impacted airports, according to a company spokesperson, who claims to be ‘working closely with them during this time.’
Delta Airlines also announced last week that it would reduce service by about 100 flights per day from July 1 to August 7 to address ongoing staffing shortages.
In a memo announcing the cancellations, CEO Ed Bastian stated that the airline has been actively hiring new employees for the past year after more than 17,000 employees left during the peak of the pandemic in July 2020.
Delta Airlines announced in early June that it had hired more than 15,000 people in the previous year, but that this was still insufficient to meet rising travel demand.
‘All of our people, including our pilots, are working hard to restore our airline and deliver for our customers as we emerge from the pandemic,’ Delta said in a statement about the delays and cancellations. We appreciate and admire their efforts.
‘We constantly evaluate our staffing models and plan ahead so that we can recover quickly when unforeseen circumstances arise, and the Delta people’s resilience in this regard is unmatched,’ the company said in a statement to NBC News.
Willie Walsh, Director General of the International Air Transport Association, told CNBC that the travel chaos is ‘isolated,’ noting that not every airport is experiencing issues.
Despite this, he acknowledged that the airline industry is still ‘not out of the woods.’
Walsh stated, “Yes, we want to do better, and yes, we will do better.” ‘However, I would strongly advise consumers considering flying to consider the fact that this isn’t the case everywhere.’
‘And in the vast, vast majority of cases, flights are running on time, without disruption, and with no problems at the airport, and I believe you can look forward to flying again.’
Those planning a summer vacation, on the other hand, have reported long layovers and numerous cancellations.
‘There were no delays until I got into the States,’ said one Emergency Room nurse from Pittsburgh, who said her trip home from Italy took about 60 hours.
‘The flight itself was changed nine times, with the gates,’ Luray Hixson said she was stuck for nearly two days at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
‘There were other Pittsburghers following us,’ she explained, ‘and we were moved from terminal to terminal, which were not close to each other; we had to take shuttles to get to these other places to catch our flight.’
Hixson said her flight was eventually canceled after her longest delay, which was a whopping 12 hours.
Fortunately, she said, her mother offered to pick her up from the airport and drive her home for six hours.
‘This is becoming the norm,’ she says, and she’s not sure if she’ll fly again in the near future.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was forced to drive from Washington, D.C. to New York over the weekend, just one day after telling airline executives to clean up their act in order to avoid another flying disaster for the Fourth of July holiday.
The father of two has given airline executives a two-week deadline to clean up the mess and ensure that travelers can enjoy a patriotic weekend and summer without the stress of dealing with airports.
He’s asked them to’stress-test’ operations ahead of the next big holiday, which means airlines may end up canceling more flights if they realize they won’t be able to operate them due to a lack of resources.
Buttigieg told the Today Show, “At the end of the day, they have to deliver.” On Thursday, the Democrat met with top airline executives to warn them about the Memorial Day disaster, which resulted in the cancellation of 2,700 flights.
‘Air travelers should be able to expect reliable service as demand returns to levels not seen since before the pandemonium,’ Buttigieg tweeted on Friday.
Airline executives around the world are now defending their operations amid the surge in demand.
On Tuesday, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby seemed to blame the airports for some of the problems, saying: ‘What we really want, at Newark Airport in particular, is to enforce the rules that limit the amount of flights to operations that the airport can theoretically handle.
‘But the other thing we need, they’re not the only ones, but what we really need is to get air traffic control towers back to full staffing.’
The Federal Aviation Administration has said it is working with airlines to shift air traffic control staff to in-demand locations, while also increasing usage of underutilized routes, according to the Washington Post.
Jason Reisinger, American Airlines managing director of global planning, also explained to WRAL that the entire industry is trying to adjust their schedules to accommodate the rising summer demand.
‘[We are] working schedules early on so … we have as few hiccups as we can on a given day,’ he said.
‘Obviously, it is affecting service levels at American, but we’re working through it.’
And IATA Director General Willie Walsh told CNBC that the travel chaos is ‘isolated,’ noting that not every airport is experiencing problems.
Still, he admitted, the airline industry is ‘not out of the woods.’
‘Yes, we want to do better, and yes we will do better,’ Walsh said. ‘But I would strongly urge consumers looking at the opportunity to fly to reflect on the fact that this isn’t happening everywhere.
‘And in the vast, vast majority of cases, flights are operating on schedule, without disruption, without any problems at the airport, and I think you can look forward to enjoying the experience of flying again.’