- [Reporter] Canceled and delayed flights,
long lines and packed planes
have become the new normal for air travel,
which is worrying some travelers this holiday season.
- [Woman] I have been in line for almost an hour
and have not moved.
- [Reporter] In early October,
Southwest canceled more than 2,000 flights
over the span of three days due to scheduling problems.
Later that month, American Airlines said staffing shortages
contributed to the more than 1,900 flights scrubbed
during Halloween weekend.
- We've seen generally there's more delays,
more canceled flights
and several really bad episodes
where there were kind of cascades of cancellations
that resulted in 1,000s of flights being canceled
over a couple of day periods.
- [Reporter] So what exactly is driving
all of these airline disruptions?
And what problems will passengers face
as we head towards the holidays?
- So air travel really was pretty much dormant last year
due to the pandemic,
hardly anybody was traveling
and then that changed really dramatically this past spring.
- [Reporter] Like many industries
struggling with an increasingly tight labor market,
airlines are facing staffing shortages.
- While the airlines got a lot of government money last year
to keep all their employees working
or on the payroll at least,
they really just had not enough
for all of those employees to do and they were concerned,
how long is the pandemic gonna last.
So they encouraged or really urged a lot of employees
who were close to retirement to retire early
or they asked people to take long-term leaves of absence,
sometimes for a couple of years.
- [Reporter] Now, airlines are racing to bring back workers
and hire pilots, flight attendants and ground staff.
But hiring has been difficult as companies
face fiercer competition for certain roles.
- You know, they are sort of seeing some strains
in some of these positions,
like ground workers and ramp workers and customer service
and all the other 1,000s of people
that are needed to make an airline run.
But suddenly a lot of those potential employees
have a lot of other options.
- [Reporter] Meanwhile, the added burden of extra shifts
and longer hours for the workers companies do have,
can lead to higher rates of staff burnout and sick leave.
- So, for the employees who are there,
some of them are complaining about new levels of strain,
especially over the summer and the last couple of months.
Airlines like at Southwest,
have been saying that they're having problems
with higher rates of sick leave and absenteeism.
And some of that might be due to COVID.
- [Reporter] As a result, worker unions
have become more vocal about another issue
disrupting air travel:
Scheduling mismanagement.
Typical hiccups that may have normally delayed a flight
for one day,
turn into multi-day meltdowns
caused by staff scheduling holes.
Consider this domino effect:
over optimistic flight scheduling
in the midst of a staffing shortage
may lead to employees being overworked,
creating higher levels of staff burnout and sick leave
and leading to even more scheduling issues
and canceled flights.
- The pilots have said,
maybe they're a little bit reluctant to pick up extra trips
when there's an option to pick up some overtime,
because if you thought you'd be willing to work
a three-day trip,
but if it turns into a six day trip unexpectedly,
you're going to have a problem.
- What we want to see, is more efficient scheduling
that goes on during these irregular operations.
- [Reporter] In a November 13th memo to flight attendants,
Southwest Airlines said it was adding more reserve crews
to support the reliability of its scheduling.
Of course, external factors like bad weather
or technical issues play a role in airline disruptions too.
But now, these issues are compounded by staffing shortages
and scheduling issues, creating chain reactions
that can leave thousands of passengers stranded.
- Americans that have got knocked off course
by a couple of days of really high winds in Dallas.
And that resulted in traffic management problems in Dallas,
that led to fewer flights being able to take off from there.
And that kind of backed up their whole system.
- [Reporter] American Airlines says
it is proactively canceling flights
to provide more scheduling certainty for crews.
- Airlines are trying to do things
to make sure that people do keep showing up to work
and they have the staffing they need.
- [Reporter] Airlines are expecting a surge
in holiday bookings amid declining COVID-19 cases
and rising vaccination rates.
But fuller planes and more robust flight schedules
often mean more difficulties when things go wrong.
To avoid staffing pitfalls and scheduling challenges,
some airlines have scaled back flight options.
- That's something we've seen with Southwest.
It just has fewer flights than it used to.
So when it does have something go wrong
and it does need to put people on other flights
to try and help them get where they needed to go,
if flights are full, that can be more difficult than that.
There are just fewer recovery options.
- [Reporter] Something else to consider
when preparing for holiday travel:
smaller airports may be overwhelmed
by an increase in travelers.
- So there's been a lot more demands for leisure travel
to places in Florida,
depending on the time of year,
to ski destinations or places out west or national parks.
And that just means some of these airports
that had historically been pretty small
or maybe not had huge traffic numbers,
are now just seeing an influx of new airlines
adding service, more flights, more passengers.
- [Reporter] Meanwhile, more crowds can also mean
more unruly passengers.
(passengers fighting)
The Federal Aviation Administration reported
over 5,000 passenger disputes so far this year.
So travelers flying this holiday season
are reminded to pack some patience.
- Everyone's kind of going through it together a little bit,
I guess.
I think we're all just going to have to kind of learn
how to do this again.