By Rob Wile
Airlines are canceling thousands of flights ahead of the busy summer travel season due to staff shortages.
Leading this trend is Southwest Airlines, which has cut nearly 20,000 flights, according to a report in The Dallas Morning News.
His goal is to hire 10,000 new workers this year.
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“I go through the Whataburger [fast food restaurant] drive-thru, pay and grab my bag.
And a job application is stapled to the bag,” Southwest CEO Robert Jordan joked earlier this year.
"That's where we've come," he said.
Especially serious has been the shortage of pilots.
According to a flight consultant, US airlines are trying to hire at least 12,000 pilots this year.
"The pilot shortage in the industry is real, and most airlines are not going to be able to carry out their plans because there simply aren't enough pilots, at least in the next five years," said United CEO Airlines CEO Scott Kirby at a quarterly earnings call in April.
Delta Airlines will eliminate nearly 100 daily flights during the summer
May 27, 202200:37
Delta, for its part, announced that it was going to cancel 100 daily flights between July 1 and August 7 in the United States and Latin America.
Pilot unions such as the Airline Pilots Association deny there is a shortage, noting that nearly 8,000 new commercial pilots have received certificates in the last 12 months.
They claim that service cuts are being used as a pretext to increase profit margins by cutting training and safety requirements.
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But most commercially licensed pilots aren't trained to fly for major airlines, according to Kit Darby, president of KitDarby.com Aviation Consulting.
Training people to fly planes, even for regional companies, can take up to five years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Darby recalled in an interview.
And smaller airlines and routes are bearing the brunt of the shortage.
He pointed to SkyWest Airlines, a Utah-based carrier with a hub at Los Angeles International Airport, which said in April that it had lost 5% of its pilots to larger carriers.
SkyWest did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
American Airlines Pilot Capt. PeteGamble, left, and First Officer John Konstanzer before taking off from Dallas Fort Worth Airport in Grapevine, Texas, Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020.LM Otero/AP
"We have a very serious problem," Darby said.
“Delta, United, American… they are parking the regional planes and choosing the most profitable routes.
Everyone else is cutting back on their services or not at all,” he explained.
Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group, which flies for American, United and shipping logistics company DHL, lost millions of dollars in the first quarter of fiscal 2022 due to flight cuts, the company detailed in its report. of results in February.
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"We never imagined levels of attrition like these," Mesa CEO Jonathan Ornstein told CNBC's Leslie Josephs last month.
“If we don't fly our planes, we lose money.
You have seen our quarterly numbers,” he added.
He said it would take up to four months for Mesa to replace a single pilot.
"We could use 200 pilots right now," he said.