Airlines should face consequences for mass flight cancellations

Unruly passengers objecting to masking rules and other restrictions aren't the only ones disrupting flights — misbehaving airlines are also causing travel chaos.

And they, too, ought to face consequences.

Tens of thousands of passengers had their plans upended when American Airlines suddenly canceled about 1,900 flights over the weekend and another 250 on Monday. At Charlotte Douglas International Airport, an American Airlines hub, 70 flights were canceled on Saturday, 100 on Sunday and dozens more on Monday. Passengers at Raleigh-Durham international airport also saw flights dropped.

American Airlines blamed the cancellations on windy conditions at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and staff shortages. The wind was a factor, but its overall effect was, well, overblown. The real problem is a staffing shortage, and that's the airline's fault.

Robert Mann, a former airline executive and now an independent airline industry analyst based in Port Washington, N.Y., said the cancellations were brought on by an industry practice of allocating staff duty time on a monthly basis. At the end of October, weather conditions in Dallas exposed a lack of staffing availability and, Mann told the Editorial Board of the Charlotte Observer, "that cascaded across the weekend and into [Monday] morning." That may explain the cancellations, but Mann said, "From a customer's perspective, there really is no excuse for it."

The weekend's mass cancellations are the latest scheduling snarl that has disrupted travel plans this year. Southwest Airlines had a similar problem in June when it dropped more than 2,600 flights and again two weeks ago, when it was forced to cancel more than 2,000 flights. Spirit Airlines canceled more than 2,800 flights between July 30 and Aug. 9.

A canceled flight is often more than an inconvenience. Some stranded passengers miss one-time only events such as graduations, weddings, funerals, birthdays and homecomings.

The airlines say the disruptions reflect difficulties in ramping up staffing to meet a surge in demand as vaccines made flying a safer option. But a staffing shortage isn't supposed to have occurred. Taxpayers provided more than $50 billion in relief funds to ensure that the airline industry would not cut jobs during COVID shutdowns. Instead, some airlines let their staffing shrink, leaving them flatfooted as the arrival of COVID vaccines rapidly revived air travel.

"It's really unforgivable," said William McGee, aviation adviser for Consumer Reports Advocacy. "They had one job to do and that was to make sure that their staffing remained full."

Instead the airlines offered early retirements and buyouts and imposed furloughs and layoffs. "That's exactly what the taxpayers were telling them not to do," McGee said.

These COVID-related hassles come on top of irritations about airlines imposing multiple fees, overbooking and shrinking seat sizes. Yet the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the supposed watchdog, has barely barked.

"The bottom line is that DOT — across multiple administrations — has done a very poor job of regulating the airline industry in terms of consumer protections," McGee said.

Today's commercial flying conditions are not what Congress and former President Jimmy Carter had in mind when the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was passed and signed into law. The idea was a worthwhile and successful one. It got the federal government out of regulating fares, routes and how new airlines enter the market.

But advocates of the law also thought it would spur competition among airlines that would in turn cut prices and improve service. Instead there was a wave of mergers.

Now these near monopolies seem impervious to consumer complaints and the nation's need for affordable and predictable air service. It's time for Congress to look again at how to make the airline industry more responsive to the public its airlines are certified to serve.