Canceled Flights Up 133%
- June 2006: 8,710 flight cancellations.
- June 2007: 20,301 flight cancellations.
Why? Number of flights are up 14%. Essentially, we're looking at a traffic jam in the air, and on the tarmac.
[via MSNBC]
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Comments:
Haha, did anyone else think that the title of the video clip was saying "June and May" not "June may"...?
Biggest problem I see is that they are publishing unrealistic schedules they know will never be attained, and then of course failing to meet them, and then not dealing with the late and inconvenienced passengers appropriately. There's an excellent article on it on Ask the Pilot.
If airlines had better business practices and were truthful about their schedules, it might appear that they had less desirable schedules for flying, but at least passengers would know when they were really going to arrive.
The problem is that there are many causes of delays and they're not in a specific area, so nothing gets done.
1) Airport capacity issues (e.g. O'hare)
2) Shortage of air traffic controllers
3) Unrealistic scheduling by airlines (mostly because airlines don't want to give up their take-off slots)
4) Aging infrastructure
5) Aging planes (which the airlines do not properly maintain)
6) and on and on
Let's ask the pilot!
What happens when you have more -- but smaller -- planes, flying to more cities, more often? Can you say "gridlock"?
[www.salon.com]
As delays hit record levels, a closer look at how airline scheduling practices are killing travel.
[www.salon.com]
Cancellations could be up due to things like pilot shortages and NWA pilots refusing to fly overtime, etc.
Are things like "unrealistic scheduling" the cause of the above? Yeah I guess, if unrealistic includes "we may not have enough pilots to cover all of these flights"
With all the problems, airlines/airports are not reducing flights to lessen the pressure.