Spirit Airlines canceled more than half of its flight schedule Tuesday, and American Airlines struggled to recover from the weekend storms at their Texas home, which left thousands of passengers stranded at the height of the summer travel season.
By early evening, Spirit had canceled more than 400 flights, or nearly 60% of its flight schedule, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. Almost 100 other flights were delayed. At least part of the blame appeared to be a technology failure that affected crew planning.
American Airlines had already canceled nearly 350 flights. It’s much bigger than Spirit, so those flights made up 11% of the flight plan – still an unusually high rate.
According to the commercial register, about three-quarters of the American cancellations appeared to be at least partially due to a lack of pilots.
The disruptions at Spirit and American are just the latest examples of airlines dealing with a surge in travel this summer. Airlines have thousands fewer employees than they did before the pandemic, but U.S. air traffic has recovered to about 80% from 2019 levels.
A spokesman for Spirit said the low-cost airline was proactively canceling some flights – dropping them before most passengers headed to the airport – in order to “roll back” operations.
“We are working around the clock to alleviate the travel disruptions caused by overlapping operational challenges such as weather, system failures and staff shortages in some areas of the company,” said spokesman Erik Hofmeyer. “We are working to provide refunds for cancellations and, if possible, to re-accommodate our guests on other flights.
A person familiar with the situation said Spirit experienced an outage Tuesday morning that affected crew planning and prevented airline staff from rescheduling crews to fill in gaps. The person who was not allowed to speak publicly said crews were stranded in many locations across the country and unable to get on assigned flights.
On Monday, Florida-based Spirit canceled more than 330 flights, or 42% of its schedule, more than double the rate of American Airlines, the second weakest among US major carriers. Spirit canceled about 20% of its flights on Sunday.
American’s troubles came Tuesday after the airline canceled about 560 flights, or 18% of its schedule, on Monday and nearly 300 on Sunday, according to FlightAware. Most were at the Dallas / Fort Worth International Airport, where thunderstorms interrupted flights for several hours on Sunday.
The American pilots union accused the airline’s management of poor planning and insufficient staff.
“It’s pretty easy. They don’t have enough pilots and they don’t have modern planning practices to do more with what they have, ”said union spokesman Dennis Tajer. He said bad weather “hits every airline, but American is the last to recover. That needs to change.”
American denied there was a lack of pilots. Spokeswoman Whitney Zastrow said in a statement that Tuesday’s cancellations were largely related to Sunday’s storm in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She said the staff were on duty around the clock to take care of customers.
Southwest canceled about 2% of its flights Tuesday, and other major US carriers had even lower cancellation rates, according to FlightAware. Numbers do not include flights on smaller aircraft marked American Eagle, United Express, or Delta Connection.
Customers who called Spirit and American also complained about being on hold for hours. Airlines received $ 54 billion in taxpayers’ money to keep staff during the pandemic, but still cut staff. Now they are adding call center employees and filling other jobs.
David Donovan, a retired Washington attorney whose future flight to Des Moines, Iowa was changed, said the American had promised in a taped message to call him back within four hours on Monday and then called him at midnight, when he tried to sleep. He decided to try again on Tuesday but couldn’t get through.
“With all the bailouts we’ve given them, they should have enough people to answer the damn phone,” Donovan said.
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David Koenig can be reached at www.twitter.com/airlinewriter
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