This year's big wave of summer trip (June-August) should have opened a new chapter in the post-epidemic era of the United States. The American people who have been driven crazy by the two-year lockdown can finally get rid of the constraints and fly out for some breathing. But what is incredible is that the flight cancellation rate and delay rate in the United States in June are actually higher than before the outbreak of the epidemic! This is because God and the airline do not go as they wish.
The bad weather that has occurred frequently in recent times is an uncontrollable natural factor. There is no way for passengers to tolerate it. However, the world's largest airline, , American Airlines (American Airlines), is not powerful at all. Thousands of flights have not arranged a pilot . Can passengers still tolerate this situation? Under the double attack, there was a situation where the Independence Day holiday (July 4) travel plan was forced to cancel .
According to a report released by the US Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC) on July 3, on Saturday night (July 2), American Airlines' vacation scheduling system broke down. mischievously arranged all pilots to have a big holiday from July 3 to 31... resulting in no captains or deputy captains arranged for more than 12,000 flights of all sizes throughout July.
The Allied Pilots Association (APA) told the Daily Mail that this ridiculous vacation schedule was caused by a bug in the computer system. American Airlines did not expect that such a small system failure would lead to large-scale operational paralysis. However, the airline said that 80% of the flights have returned to normal and the relevant personnel have returned to their positions.
Similar paralysis occurred in 2017. At that time, the system also gave all pilots a big holiday, and it was the peak travel period for Christmas and New Year holidays, which eventually led to about 15,000 flights not having any pilots arranged. At that time, American Airlines had to give a 1.5x hourly salary to recall pilots to solve this dilemma of "no one to fly". It is not known whether American Airlines is still solving this problem with a similar high subsidy method.
All pilots were accidentally on holiday by the system, but they could not fly organically, not only destroyed the passengers' passion for travel, but also impacted the airline's operating mechanism. During the peak seasons of summer and holiday travel every year, American Airlines basically will not approve employees on holidays, let alone in the case of a shortage of pilots and an imbalance in travel demand. On July 2 alone, American Airlines arranged more than 3,000 trunk flights, of which 93% were all full.
"Fox" reported in June that The US aviation industry is now facing a big gap of 12,000 pilots, and 303 airports across the country have had to reduce flights . As travel demand dropped sharply shortly after the pandemic began, U.S. airlines began to lay off employees in large numbers to reduce costs. However, the U.S. epidemic restrictions are being relaxed and airlines are eager to hire and train pilots, but this will take a long time to resolve.
American Airlines said in April's quarterly report call that the severe shortage of pilots will not be able to resolve for at least the next five years.
