[ad_1]
A surge in demand for Thanksgiving is taxing the smallest workforce of the Delta pandemic era.
The problem led Delta to cancel hundreds of flights this week, according to the pilots union and the airline.
Eventually, Delta canceled nearly one in five flights that were scheduled for Thanksgiving, and this week missed more than 500 flights. The airline said it expects its system to return to normal over the weekend.
The union representing the pilots said staff reductions due to the coronavirus pandemic and travel abandonment “have left a smaller pool of qualified and ready-to-fly pilots in fleets that are seeing increased demand during this one. holiday”.
Delta said Wednesday that “a number of factors have put pressure on our ability to provide timely staff on some of our scheduled vacation flights” but did not specify the problems.
After rolling out employee schedules for November last month, Delta added flights to its schedule and asked volunteers to cover those flights, according to a source familiar with the situation. But when there weren’t enough employees to cover those legs, the airline was forced to cancel some of them.
The airline declined to comment on this explanation. The Delta Master Executive Council at the Air Line Pilots Association said its pilots have stepped up to take extra flights during the holiday period and receive the premium pay incentive for collecting extra flights.
But as demand increased this week, heavy cuts to the air system due to the coronavirus began to manifest.
Airline passenger traffic is currently only about 40 percent of last year’s, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration, and US airlines make 43 percent fewer flights.
Delta and other US airlines responded to the decline in demand by cutting the ranks of employees. Work schedules have been curtailed, 1,800 pilots have retired early and others have been put on idle or are in line for training because the model of aircraft they flew was retired.
Employee unions and executives of major US airlines have called for a multi-billion dollar extension of a payroll support program that kept their employees on the job until September. Legislation to that effect includes other stimuli and has stalled in Washington.
Airlines have seen a relative increase in bookings this week as distant families gather for Thanksgiving dinner and college students are kicked out of college accommodations. More than a million people have passed through TSA checkpoints just four times since the spring and three of those days in the past week.
Travelers also book closer to the departure date, the airlines said, giving airlines less exposure when planning schedules more than a month in advance.
The union, in a statement, said the scheduling problem cannot be attributed to crews who get sick from the coronavirus.
.
[ad_2]
Source link
