Long hot summer ahead for air travel

Air travel this summer is projected to climb to levels not seen since the pandemic drove passengers to all but abandon the skies — and it couldn’t come at a worse time.

Airline and air traffic controller workforces are strained, leaving passengers waiting and stranded at airlines even on normal days. The industry is grappling with a spate of near-collisions. And amid it all, the Federal Aviation Administration is about to lose its acting head, with no permanent leader in sight.

Even before the Memorial Day weekend started, travel volumes spiked — a post-Covid record 2.6 million travelers passed through the Transportation Security Agency’s checkpoints on Sunday. Travel this summer is expected to balloon to levels not seen since 2019, posing a significant test for a system that suffered rampant meltdowns last summer, when air passenger numbers were 25 percent less than what’s expected this year.

“I think all of us have airline stories from last summer and the disruptions that took place then — cancellation and delay rates were at unacceptable proportions last year,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a press conference this week. “And it's important that that not happen again.”

Airlines say they can avoid a repeat of last summer, where on-time rates hovered below 75 percent across the board, to Congress’ annoyance. They have hired tens of thousands of people since last year and staffing levels are more than 9 percent higher than they were pre-pandemic. And this summer, the Federal Aviation Administration has encouraged airlines, perhaps paradoxically, to fly fewer planes that can fit more people.

That strategy could help ease the burden on airlines and the air traffic control system, which still has a shortfall in employees, but will mean fewer options for passengers trying to plan travel or rebook after a canceled flight.

The airlines acknowledge it’s just a short-term solution.

“I’m not sure that’s a model that can last forever, but for now we’ll make do,” said Nicholas Calio, president and CEO of the trade group Airlines for America.

But unlike last summer, which turned into a game of finger-pointing between the airlines and FAA over who was more to blame for delays, this time airlines and the Biden administration say they’re taking steps to collaborate.

In March, the FAA announced it would allow airlines to fly fewer flights in the New York City area without penalty, and many airlines volunteered to cut down their daily traffic, with about 87 fewer flights in the New York City area in June and more than 100 fewer flights in July and August.

John Heimlich, chief economist for the aviation trade group Airlines for America, said that commercial carriers are planning to add about 2 percent more seats for the summer travel season while cutting dozens of flights per day, particularly in the New York City area.

The hope is that fewer flights will ease the burden on overworked controllers and create more slack in the system so airlines can play catch-up when weather or staffing issues creep up.

Buttigieg struck an optimistic note at a news conference on Tuesday, pointing out that cancellations were down in the early part of 2023 compared to last year.

Flying has gotten better, slowly

“If we look at the numbers so far this year we’re seeing improvements, but I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet,” Buttigieg said in an interview last month, referring to flight cancellations. “The training gaps and the hiring gaps that happened because of Covid will take more than the one year we’ve had so far to work their way through the system.”

So far this year, airlines have canceled only about 1.5 percent of flights, and 77.1 percent of flights have arrived on time, which the DOT defines as within 15 minutes of the posted arrival time, said Heimlich.

Those are better numbers than last summer, and Heimlich said spikes in cancellation rates during the last month were mostly due to weather, such as major thunderstorms in Houston early this month. 

Calio’s message to passengers is that they should “pray for good weather every day,” a nod to the fact that the vast majority of delays and cancellations are weather-related and outside anyone’s control.

But staffing of the FAA’s air traffic controllers remains a major problem, according to Paul Rinaldi, a former president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said staffing in the New York City area is operating at 66 percent of its ideal workforce, with other towers and control centers operating around 78 to 80 percent of the ideal.

Operating on margins that thin means it doesn’t take much for shortfalls to affect a control tower. For instance, the FAA confirmed that a spike of sick air traffic controllers at Denver International Airport spurred two days of flight delays this week. Though the delays were relatively minimal, they’re emblematic of the lack of slack in the system.

“A controller can’t take anything stronger than Advil,” Rinaldi said, adding that a sip of Nyquil will take a controller off the job for at least 60 hours.

Near-misses spur new worries

The FAA maintains that flying is safe, pointing out that U.S. airlines have enjoyed their safest decade ever. But safety investigators say that the FAA could be doing more, particularly after an airplane in Austin, Texas, came 115 feet away from landing on top of another plane in February.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates accidents, has chastised the FAA for leaving open several of the board’s pending safety recommendations. Those include two that have come up in recent incidents — the board has called for more airports to install radar-based collision prevention systems, and for cockpit voice recorders to hold longer recordings instead of being overwritten after two hours.

But she also acknowledged that the FAA is often stretched thin when it comes to investing in technology.

“We have to make sure that all these upgrades to safety can be funded,” Homendy said at a summit her board held recently on near misses. “We are quick to point at FAA when something goes wrong but then we don’t follow up with why. Is it because they didn’t have sufficient resources?”

Labor unions for pilots and other aviation workers warn that too little training — or training that was rushed to staff up post-Covid — has contributed to the recent near misses.

“We need to get back to basics — at least two pilots in the cockpit concentrating on the task at hand," said Air Line Pilots Association President Jason Ambrosi, making the point that two pilots in the cockpit can better spot potential dangers. "When you have a lot of new in the system, you need to exceed the minimum."

Searching for a permanent FAA leader

As the FAA and airlines work to hire and train additional air traffic controllers, pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and others, the agency itself has a vacancy at the very top. It has gone more than a year without a Senate-confirmed leader — and now, former airline pilot and safety expert Billy Nolen is stepping down as the FAA’s acting administrator.

Nolen intends to depart this summer, creating a bigger leadership void that will ripple through the top ranks of the agency. The White House has said it plans to have another acting administrator in place before he leaves, but so far a permanent nominee has been elusive.

President Joe Biden’s original nominee for the job, Denver airport CEO and longtime transit executive Phil Washington, withdrew in March after facing tepid Democratic support and fierce attacks from Republicans who accused him of lacking significant aviation experience.

The administration has also made a push to improve flying for travelers, particularly after Southwest Airlines suffered a meltdown that canceled thousands of flights during the 2022 holiday season. DOT is investigating Southwest’s scheduling practices, and Buttigieg has said the department “is taking a two-fold approach toward the airlines: Collaboration where that is appropriate, pressure where it's necessary." Some lawmakers have accused Buttigieg of being too lenient in cracking down on poorly performing airlines after the Southwest debacle, though recent actions from the administration have blunted some of that criticism.

In recent weeks, DOT began promoting an online dashboard that shows each U.S. airline and the benefits they provide for aggrieved passengers. Frontier Airlines, for example, is the only major U.S. airline that doesn’t guarantee a complimentary hotel stay for an overnight cancellation.

The administration has also pledged to impose rules that would eliminate so-called junk fees, such as charges for seating a child next to an accompanying adult. And it has taken an aggressive stance recently against airline consolidation, including suing to block a proposed merger between JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines.

But new rules and lawsuits will take months, if not years, to resolve and are unlikely to play a major role in the summer travel season.

Airlines have made operational and technological changes in response to last summer’s struggles and Southwest’s meltdown, said Jim Higgins, a former pilot who teaches operations at the University of North Dakota’s well-regarded aviation program. But any improvements could be wiped out by increased demand, he said.

“Hopefully the airlines have had a year to learn,” Higgins said. “The trick is going to be, have we learned enough to overcome the additional travelers we’re going to see this summer? If I had to guess, my guess is it would be similar to last summer.”

Tanya Snyder contributed to this report.