More than 800 flights across America were canceled Sunday, marking the fifth consecutive day that commercial carriers wiped off at least 500 journeys, airline tracking data showed.<\/p>\n
There were 868 cancellations of flights to, out of or within the United States on Sunday, accounting for 3% of those total scheduled journeys, according to the Houston-based FlightAware.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s cancellations followed other recent, challenging travel days: Saturday (633 cancellations), Friday (709), Thursday (878) and Wednesday (1,403), the data showed.<\/p>\n This past weekend\u2019s airport misery actually marked a slight improvement from the previous week when there were 1,480 cancellations June 17, 864 on June 18 and 913 on June 19.<\/p>\n The passengers most affected were those booked Sunday aboard Delta Air Lines (234 cancellations, marking 8% of total scheduled), United Airlines (82 and 4%), Republic Airways (85 and 9%),\u00a0Allegiant\u00a0Air (25 and 5%), Cape Air (55 and 19%) and Jazz Aviation\u00a0(79 and 31%).<\/p>\n Delta blamed its cancellations on “compounding factors affecting our operation” which included “higher-than-planned unscheduled absences in some of our work groups, weather and air traffic control constraints.”<\/p>\n “Canceling a flight is always our last resort, and we sincerely apologize to our customers for any disruption to their travel plans,” the Atlanta-based carrier said.<\/p>\n United said its cancellation numbers are skewed by schedule changes out of Newark<\/a>, New Jersey, announced last week. <\/p>\n Allegiant also said in a statement Monday night that its numbers in the FlightAware database were skewed by a “schedule adjustment to 14 flights that were originally supposed to operate” Sunday. <\/p>\n The Las Vegas carrier said that passengers who were impacted by those changes were re-accommodated to other flights or issued refunds.<\/p>\n Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Jazz said in a statement:\u00a0“The ramping up of operations and increased number of travelers have been challenging for all involved in the airline industry. Staffing issues at third-party providers have had an ongoing impact on airline and airport operations.”<\/p>\n Representatives for Republic and Cape Air could not be immediately reached for comment Monday. <\/p>\n Between 2011 and 2019, the flight cancellation rate was stable, hovering between 1.1% and 1.8% in any given year, according to FlightAware.<\/p>\n Then it spiked to 5% in 2020 due to the pandemic, before settling down again to 1.6% in 2021 as vaccines took hold and Americans returned to <\/strong>take advantage of a pared-down schedule of flights, data from the Houston tech company showed.<\/p>\n The cancellation rate so far for 2022 has risen to 2.8%, coinciding with scores of Americans<\/a> voluntarily sidelining themselves from employment. <\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s translated to a wide swath of airline and airport employees leaving the workforce with any one absence, from a pilot to an airline mechanic, keeping a flight from getting off the ground, said FlightAware spokeswoman Kathleen Bangs, a former airline pilot.<\/p>\n “You need fuelers, you need aircraft cleaners, bag handlers, all of that,” she said. “It really takes a choreographed symphony of people to get an airplane in, get it turned, get it back out again.” <\/p>\n Bangs expects this wave of cancellations to stabilize by the fall season as airlines pare back schedules<\/a> and aggressively hire new pilots <\/a>and other workers.<\/p>\n![\"Travelers](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2022-06\/220627-airport-mjf-0941-98fcf7.jpg\")
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