Another bank holiday weekend was marred by an air travel headache on Saturday, as dozens of flights at Boston’s Logan International Airport were canceled or delayed due to recent bad weather and nationwide airline staff shortages.
Saturday’s troubles reflected a miserable Memorial Day weekend for air travelers when nearly 2,800 flights were canceled across the country and more than 21,000 others were delayed, according to Flightaware.com.
Concerns are mounting that travel issues will remain an issue as the July 4 holiday draws near. Federal leaders, including US Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, have urged the airline industry to do more to mitigate the impact of the disruption on travelers. And US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg met privately with leading airlines on Thursday to address the ongoing problems.
On Saturday 57 Flights had been canceled in Logan and more than 190 others delayed by about 10 p.m., according to Flightaware. The flight-tracking site reported 125 cancellations at Logan and more than 550 delayed flights as of Friday.
The service disruptions followed delays for hundreds of flights at Logan Thursday night after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a ground stop at the airport due to stormy weather on the east coast.
According to the federal agency, flights at Logan were delayed by an average of about two hours during Thursday’s ground stop.
The airport released a brief statement on social media and its website on Friday, advising people to check with their airlines about the status of their flights before coming to the airport due to recent delays and cancellations.
The delayed and canceled flights came after Buttigieg met privately with airline executives to discuss their plans to ensure a smooth flight for the July 4th holiday and the rest of the summer.
He also urged them to improve accommodations for passengers when flights are canceled, the Associated Press reported, and to see if airlines can handle the flight schedules they publish.
“I let them know that this is a moment where we really count on them to reliably deliver for the traveling audience,” Buttigieg said in an interview with NBC News.
According to the Transportation Security Administration, an average of more than 2.2 million travelers per day have passed through airport security so far this month. That number is up about 400,000 from the same period last year, but remains below travel numbers reported before the pandemic.
Air travel is expected to get busier only this summer after President Biden lifted a requirement earlier this month for international travelers to perform COVID-19 tests before boarding flights.
Airlines have blamed bad weather this summer for the delays. Additionally, Pilot unions for Delta, America and Southwest have said airlines are moving too slowly to replace pilots who retired or were on furloughs early in the pandemic, according to the Associated Press.
Markey commended Buttigieg on Friday for meeting with the airlines and said both he and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal are seriously concerned about the increase in flight cancellations.
“Passengers should not be penalized for airline mismanagement and poor planning,” Markey said in a Twitter post on Friday.
Markey and Blumenthal have criticized airlines’ handling of the country’s air travel woes after many flights were canceled or delayed in recent months, including over Memorial Day weekend.
In a joint statement earlier this month, Markey and Blumenthal urged airlines to mitigate future delays and cancellations and take action, such as
While some of these factors are beyond airlines’ control, senators said, these air travel issues “pose significant difficulties for the traveling public, and we are disappointed that these delays and cancellations are occurring so frequently that they are almost expected to be part of the journey.” , the statement said.
John Hilliard can be reached at [email protected].