Delta Is Cutting Flights This Summer
As we have seen over the past several months, airlines just can’t keep up with demand. Some of it is employees holding out to get last second pay increases for short staffed flights, versus bidding on routes early, but the main issue is just a labor shortage. Airlines cut their staff too deeply early in the pandemic and many of the people never came back. That, plus the training pipeline being shut down for a year or so, has them years behind schedule. So much so that they are looking into cutting training hours required for pilots. All of this is building up to what will be a very bumpy summer travel season.
It appears that Delta is seeing that the same way. A memo went out to employees today talking about more route cutbacks.
Here is an excerpt:
They did try to make it seem like help will be on the way in the near future with increased training happening:
Final Thoughts
Does yikes do it? I could sum it all up right there. I expected route and flight cuts this summer because demand is just too high. Airlines keep trying to price people out with $800 2 hour flights. It hasn’t worked though, people just keep buying.
My main issue is with the fact that they are looking to cut Memorial Day flights, which is like a whole 3 days away. That is terrible customer service. They should have seen this coming further out and alerted people to the issues then. Hopefully it is a small impact and this is more focusing on mid summer travel. If you are flying domestically somewhere this weekend then all I can say is, thoughts and prayers.
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Albert, I have nothing to add as you summed it up quite nicely. I wholeheartedly agree with your thoughts on this disaster that Delta is dropping on folks a couple of days before the kickoff travel season.
This is something I’ve come to expect from American, but I’ve come to expect and hold Delta to a slightly higher level.
First JetBlue now Delta who is reliable…
Southwest has been a mess too – those 3 were usually the ones you could count on
Take boatloads of taxpayer money to stay afloat when demand is down under the guise of being ready to handle demand when it returns. Instead spend that money to pay early retirement packages and then price gouge consumers when demand returns but also not be able to fly enough flights on said price gouged fares.
Absolutely embarrassing that we let them get away with this.
Yup. That was the time to demand something like EU 261 before handing out the money. No surprise that they failed doing anything though…