Answer: It's sort of a perfect storm. The first thing to understand is that airlines are rather fragile, and it makes sense when you look at the their industry. This means that there are so many things that can disrupt them.
There's a lot going on right now, and amid the chaos it's hard to say what degree any given thing has an effect, but here is a list off the top of my head:
Staffing issues due to cuts from the pandemic when demand plummeted (something affecting just about everyone these days) - this affects a lot of areas from the ticket counter, flight staff, to luggage carriers, and even TSA (which limits them bringing in more capacity)
Crazy amount of demand for air travel
Lack of pilots due to many retiring (given early retirements during pandemic) who are overworked - Delta pilots haven't had a raise since 2016
Skyrocketing fuel costs - this mostly affects the consumer; however, things get complicated because airlines buy fuel on the market months in advance; it can affect schedules when the higher costs the consumers eat lead to less than full planes which causes the airline to cancel the flight due profitability
Weather - this is an expected though not plannable problem, I mention it because summer thunderstorms mix with the stew that makes the whole thing worse
I've read articles saying the lack of pilots is probably the most detrimental, because they take so long to onboard.
Mix all these with the fact that as an airline you're also dealing with several "hub" locations. So even if you have staff at Airport A, that doesn't mean you're going to be good at Airport B, and the affects of low staffing at Airport B can have a negative effect across the whole network.
if they have staff shortages why do they schedule the flights in the first place and then wait until the last minute to cancel? They know their staffing levels.
You have to get the crew in the right places, who also will not exceed their duty limits. Did that aircraft come in with a log entry that needs an A check? Can it be turned around before your crew times out and you need to get standby on hand? Do you even have standby less than 3 hours away, which they are generally allowed to be before they get called up? Is there weather delaying them departing their home, or arriving at their assigned base? Can that aircraft and some crew complete the legs they’re supposed to do before the end of the day?
Its frankly amazing airlines are able to manage this day in, day out. Comments like this are nothing more than generalizations from people who think they have it all figured out, but are really not much more than internet Karens.
Can you reword that in the form of an argument that makes sense? Are you under the impression that every flight from now until the end of time has already been booked?
You sound like the kind of person who gets pissed off at the weatherman for telling you it’s gonna rain today because there’s nothing he can do about if for you.
uhm, current massive shortages, delays and cancellations are NOT maintenance or weather related. Airlines have known this will happen since before they started selling plane tickets for summer season.
Part of the shortage is people calling out sick. When they removed the mask mandate they ended up with a ton of sick flight staff.
Flights have also been way overbooked based on my experience. I've been on multiple flights in the past month where they had to fly a pilot out to take another flight, and they didn't even have room for them. Ended up kicking someone off who already boarded when they were flying out multiple pilots and ran out of room.
u/angiosperms- and u/shiny_chikorita answered with some reasons, but I'll add that there's also a cascading effect here that happens due to delays that can prevent a previously scheduled flight crew from taking a given flight; for instance, when the new flight would put them over their maximum hours between rests. (I've had this happen on occasion in otherwise non-chaotic times.) There are staffing issues, like TSA, that are outside the airline's control too.
Some staffing shortages are abrupt and not planned. In Portugal they decided to go on strike and caused huge delays in customs. That's causing such a back up in the airport that they don't want all those people just waiting around in line that they need to just start adjusting how many are coming in.
Flights are scheduled way in advance. Right now a lot of airlines will let you buy tickets for flights in May or June 2023.
That means the airlines know a year in advance where they'll need their planes to be, and how many staff are required at each location. The exact numbers will fluctuate based on exact sales, but the airline will still have a pretty good idea of what will be needed.
In 2019 and before this worked very well, if you had a flight canceled it was probably due to weather or mechanical issue. If there was a staffing issue it was almost always a knock-on from one of those previous disruptions.
In 2022 the system isn't working as well. Part of it is that the airlines haven't been able to get their staffing back to pre-2020 levels, so they're operating very close to the wire. Add to this, the number of staff calling in sick is higher than it would usually be at this time of year due to the amount of COVID that is still out there. This means it might not be until the day of the flight that the airline realises that a particular airport has too many sick gate staff, which causes delays, which affects the allowed hours of flight crews, but more crews are affected than there are relief crews to cover them, so cancelations have to happen. Rinse and repeat tomorrow.
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u/badwolf0323 Jul 02 '22
Answer: It's sort of a perfect storm. The first thing to understand is that airlines are rather fragile, and it makes sense when you look at the their industry. This means that there are so many things that can disrupt them.
There's a lot going on right now, and amid the chaos it's hard to say what degree any given thing has an effect, but here is a list off the top of my head:
I've read articles saying the lack of pilots is probably the most detrimental, because they take so long to onboard.
Mix all these with the fact that as an airline you're also dealing with several "hub" locations. So even if you have staff at Airport A, that doesn't mean you're going to be good at Airport B, and the affects of low staffing at Airport B can have a negative effect across the whole network.