BALTIMORE — Airline travel is picking up for the summer.
But like restaurants, hotels and other businesses, there is a problem hiring enough staff.
With Father's Day and the Juneteenth celebration this weekend, Friday was the busiest day so far with nearly 2.5 million people flying.
Many flights are being canceled or delayed for a variety of reasons.
Airlines are blaming staffing shortages, and an influx of summer thunderstorms and people are more comfortable flying again.
“Yeah, we actually had a flight canceled, yesterday and we had to kind of re-book,” passenger Jaylon Jenkins said. “It was a last-minute cancellation too.”
Sunday alone, there were more than 4,000 flights delayed and almost 900 canceled by early evening.
“It has been a lot of back-ups,” passenger Nacy Graham said. “When we flew out of Dallas about two weeks ago, we had a five-hour delay and when we flew home last night from Barcelona, we had a two-hour delay.”
Having your flight changed or delayed is not something you look forward to when you travel but for some, it wasn't the worst problem.
“It could've been a bad scenario but they were able to re-book us pretty quickly, so, it wasn’t the worst situation, but if they weren’t able to re-book it, it would've been pretty bad,” Jenkins said.
On Monday, there have been more than 12,000 delays nationally and more than 2,000 cancellations.
With the frustration of added time to our flights, maybe a grin-and-bear-it approach is the best.
“Everything is understaffed so we have to be patient and go with it if we want to pick up our travel again,” Graham said.
The Department of Transportation said if your flight is canceled an airline must book you on the next available flight with a space.
You do not have to accept that and if you don't, they must give you a refund.
