On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it had given Delta Air Lines permission to temporarily cut flights from New York and Washington, DC.

Increase reliability and minimize disruption

The affected Delta Air Lines (Delta) flights are at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and LaGuardia Airport (LGA), and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). In allowing the temporary cuts, the FAA told Delta that it should offer customers a refund or rebook them on Delta flights or another carrier as needed for flights canceled at the three airports. According to Reuters, Delta requested the FAA to waive minimum slot requirements to reduce disruption and congestion at the airports.

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The airline said the issues included New York airport construction, significant crew sick time, severe weather and air traffic control delays and cancelations. In response, the FAA said the approval "will support Delta's steps to make schedule adjustments and staff assignments to increase the reliability of its operations and minimize disruptions to travelers." Delta is now able to reduce flights for the period June 1 through September 5. Delta has not revealed how many flights are covered by the FAA waiver nor how the cuts will be spread among the New York and Washington airports.

The airplanes are there and ready to go

In May, Delta said it was cutting around 100 flights per day between July 1 and August 7, mainly to US and Latin American markets. Its reason was to "build additional resilience in our system and improve operational reliability for our customers and staff." Those cuts cited similar causes to the ones announced Friday, including weather, air traffic control, vendor staffing and increased absenteeism among staff. Finding planes is not an issue as Delta has returned around 90% of its more than 900 aircraft to service. Data from ch-aviation shows it has 557 narrowbodies back in service, including 56 Airbus A220s and 243 A320-family, and 63 Boeing B717s and 195 B737s, mainly the B737-900ER variant.

Lending credibility to the airline's claims, the FAA disclosed that in May, Delta's pilots missed 19,985 days due to sickness, an increase of 45% from the 13,786 days lost in May 2019. That worsened in June, when the comparison widened to 50% more lost days than in June 2019. Flight attendant sick days also negatively impacted services, climbing to 43,908 days in May, up 23%. The FAA said its "preference is for Delta to reduce flights from sale to minimize disruptive, close-in cancellations." It added,

"Delta stated that due to the unforeseen spike, its workforce and flight operations are under extraordinary strain, leaving little margin for operational challenges caused by construction, ATC delays and weather."

A positive benefit of waivers like this is that it allows airlines to cut flights while maintaining airport slot availability for when capacity returns. It also avoids the airport chaos and last-minute cancelations that have plagued airports in North America, Europe and Australia in recent months. Hopefully, it's a sign that airlines are matching bookings to services they can actually deliver, rather than making last-minute decisions that so severely impact passengers.

What do you think? Would you rather have fewer flights to choose from but greater certainty they will operate?

Source: Reuters