Houston passengers had it a little easier

Across the country, airlines canceled more than 49,000 flights since the summer travel season began on May 27th, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, and August 15th — or 2.3 percent of the roughly 2.1 million scheduled flights during that period, according FlightAware. Nearly a quarter of completed flights during that period were delayed, with the average lengths of delays creeping up to more than 50 minutes.

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But at least passengers departing from Houston’s airports could be reasonably confident that their flights would eventually take off, according to FlightAware. Just 582 flights scheduled to leave from Bush airport, or about 1.4 percent, were cancelled,

Just under 8,500 of the 42,043 completed flights from IAH were delayed on arrival, for a rate of 20.4 percent, about 5 percentage points below the national average.

At the smaller Hobby Airport, travelers encountered even fewer cancellations; just 121 of the 13,026 scheduled flights during this period were scuttled, for a cancellation rate of less than 1 percent. Slightly more than a quarter of completed flights experienced delayed arrivals, about the same as the national average.

The summer of air travel hell came with airlines still recovering from the pandemic while trying to meet a surge in demand. After air travel collapsed in the early days of the pandemic, airlines scrapped flights, mothballed planes and laid off or furloughed thousands of workers.

As the pandemic eased and air travel rebounded, airlines found they were short-staffed. Most of the nation’s major carriers have pared schedules in the face of staffing shortages, meaning that passengers may have fewer options if they miss a connection because of a delayed flight.

“Then you end up feeling like your flight’s cancelled,” observed Kathleen Bangs, a marketing communications strategist in FlightAware’s Houston office and a former airline pilot herself.

Overall, flight cancellations in the first seven months of the year were up 11 percent compared to the same period in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.

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But it’s not all bad news. The cancellation rate has declined from the first quarter of the year, when 3.4 percent of U.S. flights were scuttled. That was partly thanks to the omicron variant of COVID-19, Bangs said, which began circulating around the Christmas holidays and led to a surge in airline employees calling in sick.

A couple of ice storms and other adverse weather events didn’t help. On Feb. 3, for example, more than 20 percent of all scheduled flights across the country were canceled.

But beyond that, Bangs said, the cancellation rate has come down because airlines have pared their schedules “because they just don’t have enough staff.”

Airports are having a similar issue, said Mario Diaz, director of the Houston Airport System, which includes IAH, Hobby, and Ellington Airport.

“We’re down 300 employees,” said Diaz. “And we’re trying to make them up. It’s just very, very difficult right now.”

While shortages of pilots and air traffic controllers have received particular notice, staffing issues have also affected cabin crew, ground crew, and facilities staff, experts say, with hiring in many occupations being constrained by safety requirements as well as the need for training, certification, and background checks

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Federal law, for example, stipulates that pilots in a typical commercial two-person flight crew can work no more than 10 out of any consecutive 24 hours. You don’t want a sleepy pilot,” Diaz noted.

Commercial airline pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65, meaning that the profession experiences regular attrition. The pandemic, however, exacerbated the losses because of buyout packages offered as airlines cut back.

Air traffic controllers, similarly, have a mandatory retirement age of 56, and the pandemic disrupted the training pipeline for this profession, Bangs said, because much of the training has to be done in person.

Then, too, a tight labor market has complicated efforts to hire baggage handlers, security staff and cleaners, and so on. The unemployment rate stands at 3.5 percent across the nation and at 4.1 percent in Texas.

Further capacity reductions, meaning fewer flights, are likely during this year’s holiday travel season, as airlines come under pressure from passengers—and federal authorities, who have vowed to ensure that passengers on cancelled flights receive prompt refunds, at least. American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth, this week cut 31,000 flights scheduled for November, or 16 percent of its total for that month.