This is how the airline industry will suffer from the war in Ukraine 1:20
New York (CNN Business) --
Canceled flights, skyrocketing airfares, a shortage of rental cars, record gas prices and rising hotel prices.
Welcome to the northern summer of travel hell.
Airlines had said they were prepared to avoid the service problems that plagued much of the industry last year.
But between Friday and Monday, US airlines canceled 2,653 flights, or nearly 3% of their collective schedules, according to tracking service FlightAware.
That's more than they had canceled for the same holiday weekend the previous three years combined.
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In 2019, the year before the pandemic, US airlines canceled just 1.2% of their scheduled flights, despite booking 6,600 extra flights.
Experts said passengers are right to be nervous that there will be more of the same for the rest of the northern hemisphere summer.
"This does not bode well for the summer travel season as we expect it to repeat itself throughout the summer months as more people fly," Helane Becker, airline analyst at Cowen, said in a note. to customers on Tuesday.
"This was an opportunity for airlines to show that the delays of last summer would not be repeated, and yet they have not been."
Airlines have far fewer employees, especially pilots, than they did before the pandemic.
They received $54 billion in taxpayer aid during the height of the health crisis to avoid involuntary layoffs, but most airlines offered severance packages and early retirement to cut staff and save money at a time when the Air traffic was practically at a standstill.
But pilots and some other airline employees take years to get certified.
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So airlines operate with little room for error when hit by bad weather, air traffic control issues or employee sick leave, which they said happened this weekend.
"More than at any other time in our history, the various factors currently affecting our operations -- weather and air traffic control, vendor staffing, rising rates of covid cases -- all contribute to higher-than-anticipated unscheduled absences in some workgroups are creating an operation that doesn't live up to the standards Delta has set for the industry in recent years," said Director of Customer Experience for Delta, Allison Ausband, in an online post.
US airline passengers are not happy.
This is the reason
But critics of the airline say this shouldn't have surprised management: they knew they didn't have the margin of error they needed.
After service problems throughout 2021, including during the holiday season, airlines should have anticipated these problems, said Capt. Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, the union for American Airlines pilots.
"When you put the airline operating model to the test, that's when you see the same results," Tajer said.
With flights already booked to capacity, "the cancellation of a flight not only causes a cascading effect, but a tidal wave of problems. It's
déjà vu,"
Tajer added.
With planes fuller than ever, airlines may take longer to find another seat for passengers on canceled flights to get them to their destination, Tajer said.
Call centers are also short-staffed and overwhelmed by demand, especially when things go wrong, as they did this weekend.
"You can wait more hours on the phone to rebook a flight than the time the flight will take," he said.
Staffing shortages also mean higher fees
Staff shortages mean US airlines can't offer all the flights needed to meet demand.
US domestic flight capacity in June, July and August of this year is 5% below where it was in those months in 2019, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.
But passengers, especially those on vacation flights, are eager to travel again this summer.
Numerous airlines reported a record number of customers booking flights earlier for the summer of this year.
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"There's a mismatch between supply and demand," said Scott Keyes, founder of Scott's Cheap Flight, a travel booking site.
"His hopes of getting cheap flights for the summer are slim."
That combination of record demand and limited seat supply translates into much higher fares.
The Consumer Price Index, the government's reading of inflation, shows that rates in April rose 33%, compared to a year ago, and 10.6%, compared to April 2019 .
The situation is probably worse for leisure travelers than those figures suggest, because business and international travel has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Since those passengers pay higher fares than more price-sensitive domestic travelers, going on vacation is much more expensive than it used to be.
And it's not just airfares that are more expensive.
A shortage of available vehicles caused rental car prices in April to rise 70% compared to April 2019. Hotels and other accommodations were up 20% in April from a year ago and 10% from a year ago. 6%, from where it was in April 2019. All those price hikes are likely to accelerate further during the busy summer travel months.
And, of course, gas prices are at a record high, which could be pushing more travelers to fly instead of drive on some trips.
Experts believe that price pressure will begin to ease in the fall, but not before.
"I think the huge surge in demand is probably going to dry up this summer," says Hayley Berg, chief economist at Hopper, another travel booking site.
"That and the normal drop in demand that we see in September and October will probably mean lower rates."
But he said it's a good idea to book trips for the holiday season if you already have plans.
The same dynamic of strong demand and lower supply is then likely to repeat itself.
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