US travellers confront worst winter flight chaos in a decade

Airlines have cancelled tens of thousands of US flights this winter, and imposed even more delays, resulting in the worst chaos in more than a decade and straining a country dependent on planes for long-distance trips.

The latest disruptions came on Wednesday when a computer glitch at the US Federal Aviation Administration grounded planes across the nation for two hours. More than 10,000 flights were cancelled or delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.

This followed widespread problems triggered by a winter storm at Christmas. Several US carriers suffered delays while Southwest Airlines, a low-cost carrier, left some travellers stranded for days.

During the holiday season between December 20 and January 4, US air travellers endured the most flight cancellations and delays in a decade, according to data from FlightAware. The more than 32,000 cancelled flights exceeded the previous high by over 50 per cent.

The cancellations amounted to about 8 per cent of flights in the period, while 37 per cent were delayed, according to FlightAware’s data. On average, only 2 per cent of flights were cancelled between 2011 and 2021, while 22 per cent were delayed.

“It definitely is a most unusual start to the winter travel season,” said Dan Akins, an economist at consultancy Flightpath Economics. “It suggests how fragile is the system that we rely on as a utility, from a private company perspective to the public oversight of the FAA.”

The worsening service comes as passengers return to the skies after the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic and airlines contend with a shortage of pilots. Passenger complaints are three times higher than before the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Angry lawmakers and US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg are pledging to root out the causes of the Southwest mayhem and Wednesday’s halt to services.

Southwest’s operational meltdown will cost it as much as $825mn, the Dallas-based company warned last week. Service was hamstrung by its point-to-point network and outdated technology. Software that matches Southwest crews to flights was overwhelmed by the volume of cancellations, forcing the airline to manually pair aircraft with pilots and flight attendants. In some cases, it lost track of the location of its staff.

The troubles on Wednesday came after the FAA shut down domestic air traffic after a system to alert pilots to potential hazards stopped working due to a damaged database file, the agency said. David Soucie, a former FAA safety inspector, said he had never witnessed a similar malfunction in four decades in aviation.

The so-called Notice to Air Missions system is “immeasurably complex”, Soucie said, receiving feeds of information from hundreds of sources, ranging from airports to the US Department of Defense. Updating and improving the regulator’s information technology systems is a process that takes years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars, yet the political appointees who run the FAA “aren’t in place long enough to see these things through and make sure there’s funding in Congress”.

The FAA has not had a permanent head since March and is led by acting administrator Billy Nolen. The agency is funded through to the end of this year, under a five-year agreement passed by Congress back in 2018. Lawmakers will need to reauthorise funding this year, a process that could be fraught with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and Democrats holding the Senate.

Sam Graves, the Republican chair of the US House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the FAA’s flight halt was as “inexcusable” as Southwest’s episode, and underscored the need for “permanent leadership in positions across the agency, starting with the administrator’s office”.

The US economy depends on reliable air travel, said Geoff Freeman, president of the trade group the US Travel Association, and the FAA’s failure signals “that America’s transportation network desperately needs significant upgrades”.

The latest breakdown piled pressure on Buttigieg, whose department includes the FAA. A 40-year-old former mayor of the small city of South Bend, Indiana, he has become one of the highest-profile members of Joe Biden’s cabinet, regularly appearing on cable news and other outlets as a representative of the president.

Buttigieg became a national figure when he was a Democratic candidate for president in 2020. A Rhodes Scholar and military veteran, he is also widely seen as having ambitions beyond the Biden administration, with many in Washington expecting him to run again for president in the future.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday that Biden maintained confidence in his transportation secretary. Buttigieg told reporters that his “top priority is to understand the root cause” and to ensure the incident is not repeated.

Disruptions in the air travel system also are fanned by a shortage of pilots, said Akins, the aviation consultant. The situation has led airlines to operate fewer flights, making them more crowded. When a flight is cancelled, there are fewer empty seats to accommodate displaced passengers.

European governments demand more from airlines in how they compensate and accommodate passengers when they are inconvenienced, Akins said. The US system usually allows airlines to avoid more generous restitution by faulting the weather.

“You enter the system, and then you’re held hostage,” he said. “What’s the point of getting mad at the gate agent or the person on the phone? It is what it is.”

Additional reporting by James Politi in Washington