On the Fourth of July travel weekend, airports in the U.S. delayed and cancelled thousands of flights because of the massive number of passengers.
Americans didn’t let the airline prices, gas prices, and pandemic keep them home this time. Records show that the number of people traveling this summer season is documented to be as large as it had been before the pandemic.
The Transport Security Administration noted that 2,490,490 passengers were at the airport on Friday, only second to the 2.5 million passengers on February 11, 2020.
Because of this, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware, approximately 17,000 flights were delayed and over 1,400 were cancelled over a span of three days.
On Friday, 464 U.S. flights were cancelled and 6,600 were delayed.
On Saturday, 655 flights were cancelled and 5,893 were delayed, both in and out of the U.S.
The following Sunday, more than 200 flights were cancelled and over 930 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were delayed as well.
As expected, these schedule changes resulted in conflicts and complaints.
Alam Khan, whose flight from New Jersey to Toronto was cancelled days before his wedding, said, “We just got here, they let us know right now that it got cancelled.
He eventually drove more than nine hours to his destination to make it to his wedding.
On other summer holidays, Juneteenth and Father’s Day weekend, the busy travel days had over 3,300 cancelled flights from Friday to Monday, and approximately 2,700 were cancelled on Memorial Day weekend. There’s a possibility that several airlines saw this catastrophic event coming.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was commissioned to announce the severity of this issue.
“This is something is affecting all of us and it’s affecting the economy when that happens because so many people can’t get to where they need to be for work, so many people can’t get to loved ones,” he stated when in an interview with “Sunday Morning” on CBS.
To solve this, Buttigieg requested airlines to increase employment and the industry received a $54 billion bailout.
“We sent a lot of taxpayer funding, specifically for the purpose of keeping people employed at these airlines,” he said. “And now, they need to have the people and they need to have the resources to get people where they need to go.”
Sources cited:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/record-july-4th-travel-weekend-thousands-flights-delayed-cancelled-rcna36497
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/flight-delays-cancellations-fourth-of-july-holiday-travel/
Americans didn’t let the airline prices, gas prices, and pandemic keep them home this time. Records show that the number of people traveling this summer season is documented to be as large as it had been before the pandemic.
The Transport Security Administration noted that 2,490,490 passengers were at the airport on Friday, only second to the 2.5 million passengers on February 11, 2020.
Because of this, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware, approximately 17,000 flights were delayed and over 1,400 were cancelled over a span of three days.
On Friday, 464 U.S. flights were cancelled and 6,600 were delayed.
On Saturday, 655 flights were cancelled and 5,893 were delayed, both in and out of the U.S.
The following Sunday, more than 200 flights were cancelled and over 930 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were delayed as well.
As expected, these schedule changes resulted in conflicts and complaints.
Alam Khan, whose flight from New Jersey to Toronto was cancelled days before his wedding, said, “We just got here, they let us know right now that it got cancelled.
He eventually drove more than nine hours to his destination to make it to his wedding.
On other summer holidays, Juneteenth and Father’s Day weekend, the busy travel days had over 3,300 cancelled flights from Friday to Monday, and approximately 2,700 were cancelled on Memorial Day weekend. There’s a possibility that several airlines saw this catastrophic event coming.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was commissioned to announce the severity of this issue.
“This is something is affecting all of us and it’s affecting the economy when that happens because so many people can’t get to where they need to be for work, so many people can’t get to loved ones,” he stated when in an interview with “Sunday Morning” on CBS.
To solve this, Buttigieg requested airlines to increase employment and the industry received a $54 billion bailout.
“We sent a lot of taxpayer funding, specifically for the purpose of keeping people employed at these airlines,” he said. “And now, they need to have the people and they need to have the resources to get people where they need to go.”
Sources cited:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/record-july-4th-travel-weekend-thousands-flights-delayed-cancelled-rcna36497
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/flight-delays-cancellations-fourth-of-july-holiday-travel/
