More than 7,000 flights canceled, disrupting Memorial Day holiday weekend

Travelers were left stranded on Memorial Day weekend that marks the start of the busy summer travel season after airlines worldwide canceled more than 7,000 flights.

US airlines canceled more than 2,500 flights over the four-day holiday period amid a slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Monday, there were about 400 US flights canceled and 2,400 delayed, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, which put the total number of flights canceled worldwide on Monday at 1,634.

That followed roughly 1,640 cancellations on Sunday, 1,500 on Saturday, and 2,300 on Friday. On Sunday and Saturday, more than 1000 of those flying within, into, or out of the US were canceled.

In total, more than 7,000 global flights have been canceled since Friday with hundreds more flights delayed, according to reports.

US airlines, which are still rebuilding flight crews after the COVID-19 pandemic travel slowdown, blamed the cancellations on bad weather and “air traffic control actions,” noting they tried to cancel flights at least 24 hours in advance of the Memorial Day weekend.

Thunderstorms in Florida, New York, Miami, and the mid-Atlantic was one of the factors responsible for this weekend’s flight delays and cancellations, airlines said.

Delta Air Lines (DAL) canceled most of its flights among major US airlines, with more than 700 domestic and international flights axed on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

It said that 87 percent of customers were rebooked on flights that departed within around 11 hours of their original time.

Delta canceled 254 mainline flights or 9 percent of its Saturday schedule, and 530 were delayed, almost a fifth of its schedule, according to FlightAware.

On Sunday, it canceled 159 flights, or 6 percent, while its delayed flights totaled 203, or 7 percent of the schedule. Delta canceled 121 flights on Monday, representing 4 percent of its operations.

Delta announced on its website last week that from July 1 to Aug 7, it would reduce service by about 100 daily departures, primarily in parts of the US and Latin America to handle disruptions.

"More than any time in our history, the various factors currently impacting our operation — weather and air traffic control, vendor staffing, increased COVID case rates contributing to higher-than-planned unscheduled absences in some workgroups — are resulting in an operation that isn't consistently up to the standards Delta has set for the industry in recent years," the company’s chief customer experience officer Allison Ausband said in an online post.

Other carriers, including Alaska Airlines, JetBlue Airways, and Spirit Airlines have also pared back schedules to better handle disruptions like bad weather and staffing shortages.

As travel restrictions have eased this summer and fear of contracting COVID-19 during travel has decreased, many forecasters believe the number of travelers will match or even surpass levels in the good-old, pre-pandemic days.

However, airlines have thousands fewer employees than they did in 2019, and that has at times contributed to widespread flight cancellations.

A total of 6.5 million air passengers were screened by the US Transportation Security Administration during the first three days of the holiday travel period, down about 10 percent over the same period in 2019, but up over 2021 levels.

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