American Airlines Cancelling Flights Due to Staff Shortage

If you’re planning on flying American Airlines, know there’s a chance that your flight may be cancelled.

CNBC is reporting that American cancelled 123 flights on Saturday, 190 flights on Sunday and 106 on Monday due to staff shortages, maintenance issues and bad weather.

Travel demand has surged is approaching pre-pandemic levels, but the airline isn’t anywhere near pre-pandemic staffing levels. Almost a quarter of the carrier’s customer service agents took leaves of absence or were bought out during the pandemic. American has reached out to those employees and is also hiring new employees in an effort to keep up with demand.

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In a statement, American Airlines spokeswoman Sarah Jantz said they will be adjusting flight schedules through mid-July:

The bad weather, combined with the labor shortages some of our vendors are contending with and the incredibly quick ramp up of customer demand, has led us to build in additional resilience and certainty to our operation by adjusting a fraction of our scheduled flying through mid-July. We made targeted changes with the goal of impacting the fewest number of customers by adjusting flights in markets where we have multiple options for re-accommodation.

Labor shortages across the board have been a residual effect of the pandemic. In addition to airlines like American having to adjust to being understaffed, many restaurants are having trouble hiring staff, which is resulting in longer wait times.

Hell, shortages in general have been a hallmark of the COVID-19 pandemic. It all started with a toilet paper shortage after people starting panic buying it in the early days of the pandemic. Since then, there’s been a coin shortage, a shortage of Dr. Pepper and a ketchup shortage, among other things. We’re currently experiencing a chicken shortage.

I don’t dare ask what’s next.