By AccuWeather staff writer
Updated Nov. 3, 2021 2:19 PM EDT
Hundreds upon hundreds of flights have been canceled in recent days. Since Thursday, Oct. 28, over 2,300 flights have been canceled by American Airlines alone. The weather has taken the brunt of the blame for many of these cancellations, but tens of thousands of frustrated travelers have been left to ask: "What's really going on?"
When the cancellations began on Oct. 28, the weather, rightly, took the blame.
"On the 28th and 29th, Dallas was one of many cities facing a wind threat," AccuWeather Meteorologist Lauren Hyde said. "A wind advisory was issued for such a threat, and it verified as one would expect. Dallas Love Field recorded a gust of 58 mph on Thursday," she said. "Other high gusts were also recorded, including a 56 mph gust at McKinney [National Airport], northeast of Dallas."
A Southwest Airlines passenger checks her boarding ticket at the Portland Jetport, Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2021, in Portland, Maine. Southwest Airlines appears to be fixing problems that caused the cancellation of nearly 2,400 flights over a three-day period. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Under normal circumstances, the logistical speed bump of a few Thursday and Friday cancellations ends there, and the weekend goes on like normal. But the current circumstances are anything but normal, Senior Airline Business Reporter David Slotnick of ThePointsGuy.com told AccuWeather.
"Things just aren’t normal right now. Disruptions have an outsize impact compared to previous years," Slotnick said. "And it looks like that’s something that we’re going to keep seeing."
The reason for that, like seemingly every other problem in the world these days, has its roots in the coronavirus pandemic.
In this frame grab from cellphone video, passengers look for information on their flights, Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021, at Dallas Love Field. Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds of flights, blaming the woes on air traffic control issues and weather. (AP Photo/Julie March)
The straw that broke the camel's back
According to a statement provided to AccuWeather, American Airlines COO David Seymour told company employees that the weather is to blame for the recent mayhem. But in the wake of the pandemic, what used to be a day or two of weather-related flight cancellations now hinders airlines for much longer.
That reason is twofold, Slotnick said.
On one hand, the industry has been left extremely short-staffed due to voluntary buyouts, early retirement and voluntary leaves. On top of that, the timing of last week's storm was as unlucky as it gets.
On Monday, Nov. 1, an extra 1,800 flight attendants returned to work at the conclusion of their voluntary leaves of absence. Had the storms occurred this Friday rather than last Friday, Slotnick said the scheduling domino effect would've been much less devastating.
But the logistical nightmare isn't just due to a stunted workforce.
On top of the staff shortages, airlines are cramming their flight schedules to both catch up on a year of lost revenue and also to meet the heavier-than-expected demand from travelers ready to get out of their houses.
"Each airline is basically loading their schedules and flying as much as they possibly can with the equipment and the staff that they have available," Slotnick said. "They’re making a deliberate strategy to not leave margin for error, not leave any slack in the system, but really just trying to capture as much demand and serve as many people as possible, which is great. Until you end up with the situation where there’s just the wrong storm at the wrong place."
Southwest passengers wait to check in at Miami International Airport, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021, in Miami as the air carrier canceled hundreds of flights. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
In other words, the already slim margin of error that the industry has historically relied on to get airplanes off the ground has now become razor-thin.
And with that razor-thin margin of error, the effects of a couple of windy days in Dallas can be just as severe as a smothering blizzard in a pre-pandemic year.
"Were the storms really that bad? The answer is yes and no," Slotnick said. "On the one hand, no they weren’t ... they were pretty short-lived, it seemed. But sometimes that’s enough when you have these things timed to the nearest minute. Knocking out an airport for 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes can cause days of ripple effects, like what we’re seeing."
An industry-wide worry
In October, Southwest Airlines was forced to cancel more than 2,000 flights for similarly mundane reasons. While the CEO blamed the rainy weather, staff shortages and air traffic control issues due to the company's vaccination mandate cost the company a total of around $75 million between Oct. 8 and Oct. 13.
On top of the mass exodus of airline staffers due to pandemic-induced financial constraints, there are also many staffers that remain off of the workforce due to vaccine mandates. While Southwest has since reversed its vaccine mandate, American Airlines is still requiring all of its U.S. employees to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving, or face termination.
Back in August, Spirit Airlines dealt with similar ripple effects, as the airline proactively canceled thousands of flights months in advance of the domino effect from last-minute cancellations, staff shortages and bad weather.
Passengers wait in a long line to get a COVID-19 test to travel overseas at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Recent flight cancellations caused many passengers to redo their tests while others were unable to get the test locally due to long lines caused by the surge of the Delta variant. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
"What each of the airlines has had to do and what American has done in this case, which is basically just a reset of the system," Slotnick said. "They are proactively looking ahead to the next day or two or three and cancel as many flights as they need to, just to get everything and everyone back into the right place, so flight attendants aren’t stuck in Tulsa when they actually need to be in Dallas, or in Seattle when they need to be flying over to D.C."
An interesting quirk in the industry that has fueled the chaos is the issue of flight attendants and pilots having a maximum number of hours they're allowed to work in a day, in a week and in a month. When a storm strikes at the tail end of a month like it did last week, staffing constraints can get tight.
And, again, that's a scheduling nuisance under normal circumstances. Under these circumstances, it's crushing.
"They’re operating without the margin for error when [airlines] don’t have an available crew like this," Slotnick said. "Everybody has hit their hours, nobody’s available, so there’s nobody who can help sort of replace those timed-out people."
What does this mean for upcoming holidays?
"The whole airline business is logistics, and it’s part of why I like covering the industry, it’s just so absurdly complicated and it almost always works, until it doesn’t," Slotnick said. "And then the slightest thing can throw things off."
While the travel headaches ahead of Halloween weekend were frustrating, the lines at airports are about to explode in the coming weeks ahead of Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanza and Christmas.
With the ever-evolving battle against the coronavirus holding entire industries hostage, Slotnick said it's nearly impossible to look ahead with any substantial optimism.
FILE - In this Dec. 2, 2020, file photo, an American Airlines flight attendant hands out snack bags aboard a Boeing 737 Max jet before taking off from Dallas Fort Worth airport in Grapevine, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)
To prepare for the unknown, his best advice for travelers in the coming months is to expect the unexpected and give yourself more buffer than ever, Slotnick said.
"What I would say to travelers is: 'expect disruption.' Fly a day early if you can, or a day later. Leave a day later to go back home," he said. "Just really leave as much buffer on either side of your trip as possible because things just aren’t normal right now."
Help may be on the way. As American Airlines CEO David Seymour told employees in a company memo, the remaining flight attendants currently on leave will be returning by Dec. 1. In addition, more than 600 new hires will start by the end of 2021 and an anticipated 4,000 new employees will be hired by the end of the fourth quarter, he said.
"Our team is extraordinarily resilient, and we cannot thank each and every team member enough for all you are doing to take care of our customers as well as each other," Seymour said to his employees to close the statement.
But as Slotnick said, it will require more than just a return to normalcy to win back customers' trust, particularly those who have been scorned by the thousands of cancellations.
"In terms of the holiday travel, I think the airlines that have been affected like American and Southwest are going to have to explain to passengers why they can feel confident booking for the holidays instead of going somewhere else."
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