 contends that severe weather and flight volume were the biggest drivers in flight delays in 2023.){kind=link}
Surging summer delays and a record number of travelers have made a habitually horrible peak airline travel season feel even worse.
Reuters
Jump To
What’s happening?
While flight cancellations are down about 14% this summer compared to last, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, delays are up, and so are frustrations.
“It got cancelled,” one flyer told CBS News of their flight. “We don’t know why, and they aren’t going to fly us out until two days from now.”
This week, the House overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill that seeks to address airlines’ obligations to their customers at a time of growing disruption and dysfunction in the industry.
“We understand that airlines don’t control the weather, but they still need to meet certain basic standards of taking care of customers,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told Reuters.
Buttigieg is pursuing new rules that would require companies to compensate passengers for delays or cancellations that are the fault of the airline.
“One thing we’ve found is that even threats of regulation can motivate airlines to do the right thing,” Buttigieg said.
flights cancelled
Why the “unacceptable delays”?
However, the airlines say the Federal Aviation Administration is also to blame, pointing to a shortage of staff and air traffic controllers.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contends that severe weather and flight volume were the biggest drivers in flight delays in 2023.
The agency contends that it is working to hire 1,800 more air traffic controllers in the next year. It says it is also launching new, online videos to explain to passengers in real time what is happening in the skies.
Heat waves, wildfires, floods and storms have been hitting regions across North America, Europe and Asia. Thrill-seeking tourists headed to China’s “Flaming Mountains” to experience land-surface temperatures of up to 80 C (176 F), while tennis-ball-sized hailstones injured more than 100 people in northern Italy.
Getty
As Southern Europe struggles with a heat dome that’s turned it into “a giant pizza oven,” tourism operators are seeing a “surge in popularity” for more temperate or less crowded destinations, such as Ireland, Denmark, Bulgaria and Czech Republic.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), an industry association that represents the world’s airlines, is blaming that squarely on “poor planning” by the US FAA and NAV Canada, the Canadian air navigation services provider. But outdated technology, airline staffing issues and bad weather are also playing into recent air traffic meltdowns, as per CNN.
For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit universo virtual News.