Here are your FOX Business Flash top headlines for April 8th.
Airlines are hiring staff and cutting flights to avoid upheaval as both customer demand and labor shortages continue.
JetBlue Airways Corp. announced this weekend that it would reduce flights in May and throughout the summer due to staff shortages after more than 300 flights were canceled over the weekend. Alaska Air Group Inc. said last week it would cut back on flying in the spring to catch up on pilot training. Meanwhile, other airlines, including American Airlines Group Inc., say they’re braced for the summer surge after months of a hiring frenzy.
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Airlines say they are taking lessons learned from last summer, when operations were strained due to booming demand. Faced with staff shortages, many airlines have not been able to quickly recover from routine disruptions such as inclement weather. Travelers faced cancellations, delays and hours of waiting for phone customer support.
“We’re very focused on maintaining our resilience,” said David Seymour, American’s chief operating officer. “We will not let go of our vigilance.”
An American Airlines plane is seen at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York City, December 26, 2021. (Reuters/Jeenah Moon/Reuters Photos)
American previously said it plans to hire about 180 pilots a month this year, and Mr. Seymour says the schedule is on track, with more than 600 hires by the end of March. His team has focused on supply chains to ensure issues like catering shortages don’t cause flights to fail and cause delays.
“Two years ago, three years ago, I’m not sure it would ever come up at the COO level because you just took it for granted,” he said. “I have teams looking at everything. I mean, from stirrers to napkins to pillows to blankets to headsets.”
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Airline executives say bookings are exceeding expectations despite rising fuel costs pushing up ticket prices. Summer flight schedules have not yet been finalized and are still in flux, but US carriers are currently planning to fly about 16% more seats than last summer, according to data from Cirium.
“The staffing of the operation will be on the razor’s edge,” said Tim Donohue, co-founder of Aerology, a startup focused on predicting flight disruptions. “The razor blade hardly works when everything goes according to plan.”
Travelers queue at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on December 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Nam Y Huh / AP Newsroom)
COVID-19 is still playing a big role. Earlier in the year, airlines canceled thousands of flights as Omicron infections swept their workforce. Airlines in the UK have been hit by a similar wave of infections this month, causing flight cancellations. That could happen again if the number of cases in the US rises again.
Airlines say they’ve spent months hiring staff, including pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, ramp workers and customer service representatives.
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Spring break trips were the first tests of industry readiness, and there have been some signs of strain.
This weekend JetBlue canceled 18% of its flights on Saturday and 13% on Sunday. The airline said it was trying to get its operations back on track after last week’s bad weather and was being proactive.
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Despite hiring more than 3,000 new crew members this year, JetBlue is still understaffed in some areas, it said. The airline is expecting a record number of travelers this summer, but the schedule it laid out months ago to meet that demand is proving too ambitious, President Joanna Geraghty wrote in a memo to employees.
JetBlue plans to reduce flying by 8% to 10% in May and a similar amount over the summer, Ms Geraghty wrote.
Passengers aboard JetBlue Airways Corp’s inaugural flight from New York’s JFK Airport to London Heathrow Airport on August 11, 2021. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images) (Getty Images)
“Based on your feedback that the schedule is too tight, we know the best plan is to reduce capacity now,” she wrote.
Severe storms that lingered over Florida earlier this month, causing airspace restrictions, also upended flight operations. While most airlines were back on schedule within days, some have struggled to get on track. Unions said flight attendants had to wait for hours to find transport and hotels.
Some flight attendants have had to sleep at airports, unions representing flight attendants at American and Southwest said.
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In a letter to senior Southwest executives last week, Lyn Montgomery, president of the union that represents Southwest’s flight attendants, wrote: “The current work environment is not only unstable, it’s chaotic.”
A Southwest spokeswoman said the snafu was due to fully booked Florida hotels where crews were stuck and that work was being done to improve contingency planning.
An American spokeswoman said the airline is aware of the problem and is working to improve it.
American Airlines flight attendants arrive for work at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, Illinois July 2, 2008. (Scott Olson/Getty Images/Getty Images)
To ensure enough flight attendants are working, JetBlue is offering a $1,000 bonus to flight attendants who aren’t out of work through May 31, and an additional $100 per flight for flight attendants who pick up open flights on days off, according to a Memo to crew.
Southwest increased starting wages to a minimum of $17 an hour and no longer requires most airport employees to have a high school diploma. About 15% to 20% of new hires don’t show up on day one for some positions, said Greg Muccio, the airline’s senior director of talent acquisition. “We were kind of shocked by that. We just had to adapt,” he said.
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The airline believes it can hire enough staff to fly its June schedule.
Pilots from Alaska, Delta Air Lines Inc. and American have been picketing in recent weeks, complaining that the airlines have created flight schedules with little room for error, leaving pilots overworked and fatigued.
“We continually evaluate our workforce models and plan ahead so that we can recover quickly if unforeseen circumstances arise,” said a Delta spokesman.
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Competition for pilots among airlines was fierce. The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, the union that represents Southwest’s pilots, said that in some recently hired classes, about 10% of pilots have resigned. In a class 27% left. The union representing pilots at Alaska Air said it has seen record departures.
A Southwest Airlines plane taxis at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on October 11, 2021 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/Getty Images)
Alaska blamed a staff shortage for the cancellation of around 10% of its flights last weekend.
The airline said Thursday it would reduce flying by about 2% through the end of June. Alaska said it had 63 fewer pilots ready to fly in April than it planned in January when it set its schedule.
Pilot training has also become a bottleneck, with airlines not always having enough flight instructors or simulators to handle the massive influx. Southwest has had to scale back plans to hire first officers as it works to recruit more flight instructors. Alaska said it has assigned a team to make sure it keeps up with pilot training and doesn’t allow the schedule to get out of sync with the number of pilots it has.
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“The bottleneck has been training everyone while we ramped the airline back up and got planes back into service during the pandemic,” Ted Christie, CEO of Spirit Airlines Inc., said at an industry meeting. “We’re getting there.”