Travelers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and across the country are facing long delays and flight cancellations attributed in part to days of severe weather leading up to the busy Fourth of July holiday weekend.
As of early Wednesday morning, more than 900 flights had been delayed in the United States, according to FlightAware. Cancellations exceeded more than 670 flights.
Those numbers were changing by the minute in an ominous sign ahead of the holiday weekend. Travel is expected to peak on Thursday with more than 52,500 flights in total, likely the busiest day of the holiday period.
A few days before the holiday weekend, cancellations and delays are already being registered in thousands of flights throughout the country. To see more from Telemundo, visit
Most of the cancellations and delays occurred on the east coastbut outages there and elsewhere are causing problems on the West Coast as well.
More than 100 flights were delayed and 19 canceled Wednesday morning at LAX, according to tracking FlightAware.
“Plans keep changing,” an LAX commuter told sister station NBCLA. “Literally, by the minute, it’s changing.”
Some 6,500 flights were delayed and about 1,900 canceled on the East Coast on Tuesday. United Airlines, with a major hub in Newark, New Jersey, canceled about 500 flights or 18% of its schedule, and JetBlue canceled 16% of its flights, according to FlightAware.
The delays are compounded by thunderstorms that swept through the Northeast on Tuesday. At various times, the Federal Aviation Administration halted flights to New York’s LaGuardia Airport and Reagan Washington National and Baltimore-Washington airports near the nation’s capital.
In addition to bad weather, a technology glitch also contributed to airline outages.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose department includes the FAA, has been bashing airlines for more than a year.
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He accused them of failing to meet reasonable customer service standards and suggested they are scheduling more flights than they can handle.
The airlines are responding.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby blamed a shortage of federal air traffic controllers for massive outages last weekend at its Newark hub.
“We estimate that more than 150,000 customers at United alone were affected this weekend due to FAA personnel issues and their ability to manage traffic,” Kirby wrote in a memo to employees Tuesday night.
United could be contributing to their struggles. The Flight Attendants Association, which represents the airline’s cabin crews, said it complained about wait times of more than three hours for workers who called a crew scheduling center that had “phone lines and limited staff.
A woman tells of her nightmare of losing her suitcase at an airport. These are her tips.
The union told flight attendants near the end of their shifts to report to supervisors and find a hotel room.
The FAA has admitted it is understaffed at key facilities, including one in the New York City region.
It is training about 3,000 new air traffic controllers, but most of them won’t be ready any time soon. Last week, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general said in a report that the FAA has made only “limited efforts” to adequately staff critical air traffic control centers and lacks a plan to address the problem.
This story first appeared on Telemundo 52’s sister station, NBCLA. Click here to read this story in English.
