Pilot shortages, fuel prices and Covid: US braces for travel chaos | US news

On a recent Friday night Laura Waring needed to fly from Newark, New Jersey, to San Diego to help set up her healthcare information technology company’s conference, which was scheduled to start the next Monday.

But after her flight was repeatedly delayed and then canceled, Waring slept for about 45 minutes on a cot at Newark airport before she woke up cold and uncertain how she would get to California.

That was just the start of her troubles.

And according to travel industry experts, Waring’s experience will likely not be unique among people flying in the coming months. Over Memorial Day weekend, there were more than 2,800 cancelations and 20,644 delays among US airlines, according to according to tracking service FlightAware.

The experts see that as an early indicator of a turbulent summer travel season because of a pilot shortage; increased consumer demand; a recent rise in fuel prices; and disagreements over which Covid-19 restrictions should remain in place.

“We’re really seeing revenge travel – people having had two years of pent-up demand and wanting to go out and travel,” said Matthew Howe, senior manager of travel intelligence at Morning Consult, a market research firm. “On the flipside, I think we have seen that some [airlines] may be struggling to meet the demand.”

The number of airline pilots and engineers decreased from 84,520 in May 2019 to 81,310 in May 2021, an almost 4% decrease, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the country will need more than 14,000 new pilots each year for the next decade, according to the bureau.

“Workforce shortages predating the pandemic have been accelerated, particularly for technicians and for pilots, who have long been entering the career in fewer numbers than those retiring,” the Regional Airline Association, a trade group, stated in its 2021 annual report.

That shortage means people seeking to travel this summer will likely face fewer options than before the pandemic, according to Michael Taylor, practice lead for travel intelligence at JD Power, a consumer research firm. For example, before the pandemic airlines may have had had departures every hour for major hubs like Chicago and Atlanta. Now they will only happen every 90 minutes, and the planes will be busier, he said.

The airlines are “going to be redeploying a larger fleet with fewer city destinations in their flight system”, said Taylor.

Fewer flights and a shortage of staff translates into less slack in the system, Taylor explained. Whereas before the pandemic, an airline may have had crews at an airport on standby in case of an unexpected event, airlines aren’t doing that as much because they need those staff on flights.

Then when a storm hits and delays a flight, there may not be substitutes for the scheduled crew members, who the Federal Aviation Administration only allows to fly a certain number of hours each day.

Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for Allied Pilots Association, the union for American Airlines pilots, said the airline is loading up pilots’ schedules “to the absolute maximum”.

“When you build a schedule with very little buffer because you have disproportionately assigned your pilots…