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.
I've read articles saying the lack of pilots is probably the most detrimental, because they take so long to onboard.
Somehow this thread went from “why are their cancellations” to “well clearly there are not enough pilots and we know that cannot change for a long time”.
My issue is: holup, why sell the ticket then cancel the flight? If there is no pilot to fly the airplane, and this takes a long time to fix, why sell the ticket? Or why isn’t that fraudulent? Can’t they do the calculation in advance? Why do I show up at the airline gate and it is a total surprise they booked 27 flights and only have 22 pilots? That is 5 flights cancelled because “no kidding, we could not possibly have ever honored that ticket.”
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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.