American Airlines cancels hundreds of flights

A combination of inclement weather and staffing shortages left thousands of travelers stranded over the weekend when the company cut nearly 2,000 flights. Heavy winds in Texas forced American Airlines to shut down all runways at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, which left staff displaced across the country. The airline canceled roughly 900 flights on Friday and Saturday and another 900, which accounted for 30 percent of its schedule, on Sunday. The airline had nixed another 338 flights as of Monday morning, according to tracking on FlightAware. Southwest Airlines experienced similar cancellations in September that cost it roughly $75 million.

When will things get back to normal? David Seymour, American’s chief operating officer, circulated an employee memo on Saturday informing the company that they were “proactively canceling” flights to ensure safety and “scheduling certainty” for crews. During the pandemic, airlines could not fire employees, but American furloughed roughly 19,000, many of whom received cash incentives to voluntarily quit. Seymour said 1,800 flight attendants are returning from leave on Monday, and the company plans on hiring at least 600 more staffers before the end of the year.

Dig deeper: Listen to financial analyst David Bahnsen discuss declining workforce participation during the pandemic on The World and Everything in It podcast.