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“The very first symptom of
the general collapse was an old one: nothing worked.” The sentiment
is old—it comes from Doris Lessing’s 1969 novel,
Rugby porn—but it’s hard to think of a better epitaph for
the economic vibes of 2022. From the oil markets to the
Rem x misa to the general sense of safety and disorder, the
U.S. seems to suffer from chronic Nothing Works Syndrome.
The latest victim of acute
NWS is air travel. Around the world, security lines are
Yuliana black ambush and Maseratixxx blowjob. The major carriers
JetBlue, American Airlines, and Delta canceled nearly 10 percent of
their flights last weekend, creating mayhem at major airports.
In an interview for my
podcast African tribe cock, I spoke with Scott Keyes, the founder
of the Scott’s Cheap Flights newsletter, about why air travel has
been such a mess this summer. This transcript has been edited and
condensed.
Derek Thompson:
Scott, what’s happening and why?
Scott Keyes: The
amount of turmoil in the airline industry over the past two years
is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in travel. The 9/11 attacks
caused a 7 percent drop in overall travel. But 2020 travel was down
70 percent. Airlines were worried about surviving. That meant
laying off staff, shedding pilots, selling airplanes, and retiring
aircraft. Now, as travel rebounds, we are paying the price.
Delta shed 30 percent of
their employees—almost 30,000 people cut from their staff. American
Airlines laid off 30 percent of their staff, through buyouts, early
retirements, or otherwise. Airlines were trying to become as lean
as possible to reduce those operating expenses with the
anticipation that they were not going to be making much money. They
also retired older planes.
Those decisions certainly
helped improve the balance sheet throughout 2020. But would they
have made the same call if they had known how quickly travel demand
would rebound? Almost certainly not. They assumed that this was
going to be a six-year recovery period, not an 18-month recovery
period. So when travel demand started rebounding much quicker than
they anticipated, the airlines were caught flat-footed.
Thompson: Why is it
taking so long to adjust? Why is it so hard to hire pilots or bring
back more airplanes?
Keyes: Being a pilot
is not an entry-level job. It takes years of training. There are
many regulatory requirements, like a mandatory retirement age for
pilots: 65 years old. There are mandatory training requirements for
U.S.-based pilots. They have to fly 1,500 hours before they’re
allowed to pilot those commercial planes.
Similarly, Boeing doesn’t
have tons of 787s or 737s sitting in a warehouse waiting for
airlines to come pick them up. There’s a years-long delay in a
manufacturing process plagued with supply-chain disruptions, just
like so many other parts of the economy.
Thompson: The
industry is so woefully understaffed that whenever there’s a storm,
or a pilot who calls in sick, there’s no redundancy or resiliency
in the system, and you get these cascading cancellations. But
wasn’t it obvious 18 months ago that we’d have vaccines? Wasn’t it
obvious six months ago that Americans wanted to get out of the
house? Why is all this mayhem happening now?
Keyes: There’s a
labor-supply issue, not just for airlines but also the TSA. If you
live in Milwaukee and you’re looking for an entry-level job, you
could become a transportation security officer for $19.41 an hour,
or you could go on Amazon’s website and see that there’s a job in
the area for $19.50. Would you rather help load and unload bags
outside in the dead of winter in Milwaukee, or work in a
climate-controlled environment in a warehouse for Amazon? That’s
the trade-off a lot of folks are making. Labor shortages cause
delays and cancellations. In normal times, airlines might have a
reserve crew of pilots or flight attendants that they can call in.
But now there is not the reserve in place to bridge the gap. The
result is a huge swath of delays and cancellations.
Thompson: Laurie
Garrow, a professor at Georgia Tech, directed me to FlightAware, a
website that tracks airline-industry statistics. On any given day,
it seems normal to have a cancellation rate of about 1 percent—or
one cancellation for every 100 scheduled flights. Last Thursday,
JetBlue canceled 14 percent of its flights. Last Thursday and
Friday, American canceled 10 percent of its flights. On Friday,
Saturday, Sunday, Delta canceled 8 percent of its flights.
Meanwhile, Frontier and Spirit canceled just 1 percent of their
flights in that time. Why are the major carriers having these major
problems right now?
Keyes: Today’s
airline that gloats about not having cancellations is tomorrow’s
airline that’s experiencing a meltdown. I don’t want to pretend
that Spirit and Frontier don’t experience meltdowns. They
absolutely do. That said, a few factors can explain why we’re
seeing higher rates of cancellations among legacy full-service
airlines. First, many of the budget airlines like Spirit already
trimmed their summer schedules when they realized they didn’t have
enough pilots and crew to operate the schedule they had planned.
The legacy full-service airlines can suffer sometimes from
hubris.
Second, many of the legacy
airlines have hubs in crowded corridors like New York, Chicago, and
Boston, which can suffer from compounding cancellations when
there’s a thunderstorm [which are more common in the summer]. Those
cancellations beget more cancellations. A flight from JFK to Miami
that gets canceled results in a further cancellation for that
flight out of Miami.
Thompson: Has
anything changed about air travelers? Are we doing something
different in 2022 that is contributing to these delays?
Keyes: Leisure
travel has fully rebounded, whereas business travel is still down
30 percent. Now, why does that matter? Because leisure travelers
tend to be more inexperienced when it comes to travel. They need
more support from the airlines handling their itinerary ahead of
time. They might need more time going through security. They don’t
remember to take their shoes off or to take their laptop out. When
each person takes an extra 20 seconds, you multiply by 3,000
passengers, and these little micro events matter at scale.
Relatedly, the two airports
with the biggest growth since the summer of 2019 are Miami, up 17
percent, and Las Vegas, up 10 percent. San Francisco is down 26
percent. Detroit is down 25 percent. Chicago O’Hare is down 18
percent. The business-heavy destinations are down, and the leisure
destinations are up.
These changes have bigger
knock-on effects for some airlines than others. Historically, the
budget airlines have had the leisure traveler as their bread and
butter. Spirit Airlines does not have a significant amount of
business travel within its portfolio. Conversely, American Airlines
and Delta make the most money from business travelers, who are up
to seven times more profitable on a per-person basis. And they
orient their entire operation around serving those business
travelers and fly more to Chicago, San Francisco, and New York.
Because a pandemic came
along that crushed business travel, Delta and American and United
are now playing away games. The budget airlines have home-field
advantage. And budget airlines have basically eaten all the growth
over the past three years. Allegiant [flights] are up 17 percent
since 2019. Spirit is 7 percent. Frontier is up 6 percent. Whereas
Delta, United, American are down.
Thompson: To what
extent do you think regulatory policy is making America’s airlines
particularly fragile to the sort of problems we’re currently
experiencing?
Keyes: One of the
front-and-center issues discussed in the airline industry right now
is this question of pilot training. Is 1,500 hours the proper
amount of air time we should be expecting from pilots before we
certify them to fly commercial jets? On the one hand, it’s easy to
say, “You can’t be too careful.” Just imagine the attack ads if
somebody votes to decrease the training requirement, and then all
of a sudden there’s a crash. The optics are horrendous. On the
other hand, the U.S. is a bit of an outlier. Most other countries
do not require anything near this level of training ahead of being
certified. The U.S. historically has not required that level
of training. And we let foreign pilots fly to JFK and SFO and LAX
without this requirement. All that said, there’s still no quick
overnight fix that will immediately get you more flights, more
pilots, and a greater supply of air travel. Certainly not for this
summer.
Thompson: So when
does this end? When can we expect traveling to feel more
normal?
Keyes: Cheap flights
aren’t gone forever. They’re just gone for this summer. The rolling
delays and cancellations you’re seeing are predominantly a side
effect of the demand for travel right now. So many folks are making
up for trips they haven’t been able to take over the past couple of
years, and summer’s always the most popular time of year to travel.
By mid-September and beyond, you have less people traveling. We’ll
have more pilots and planes in reserve to be able to come in when
there is a thunderstorm, or an IT meltdown. We’ll have more
reserves to help prevent a catastrophic wave of cancellations and
delays. So, bad news for the short term. Good news for the fall and
beyond.
