Air travelers in U.S. face cancellations over Memorial Day weekend

This is when American, generally tune off for 3 months

Many forecasters believe the number of travelers will match or even surpass levels in the good-old, pre-pandemic days. However, airlines have thousands fewer employees than they did in 2019, and that has at times contributed to widespread flight cancellations.

This seems to be fully on the companies, acting as if they could scale back to operations at the level before the pandemic but with a heavily reduced workforce makes no sense, if they projected this rush of travel they should have been prepared from before, and if they can't prepare on time not programming flights above what they can actually do is much more responsible.

The same thing is happening in the UK due to 'software issues'. All UK based airlines should be able to drop back to pen and paper effectively after the BA tech fiascos recently. Is this some backhanded way of suppressing travel or just incompetence? They have had plenty of time to employ and train staff.

The Scottish government have limited rail services at the worst possible time, numerous roadworks are taking place, the ports are backed up and the rail unions are painting targets on their backs, threatening a strike.

What are these 'air traffic control actions'? The sky hasn't got smaller.

After the last two years we are a suspicious, short-tempered public, so be more transparent. Either we get more detail or we assume our Glorious Leaders are messing with us again.

I'd been itching to travel since the start of the pandemic and its effect on air travel. But I was lucky to be able to fly to Mexico a few months ago and now I think I can wait until things like those in this story have become a memory of the past. Patience, people, patience.

The government gave them billion,and that how they treat taxpayer

This seems to be fully on the companies...

They did the same thing around the 2008 financial crisis. Massive layoffs and then a year later they started crying about pilot and other staffing shortages. Like, hello?

What are these 'air traffic control actions'? The sky hasn't got smaller.

I will go out on a limb here and speculate that there are more than a few air traffic controllers who shouldn’t hold position that they do, thanks to quotas.

Either we get more detail or we assume our Glorious Leaders are messing with us again.

this is also a big possibility

What are these 'air traffic control actions'? The sky hasn't got smaller.

No, but bad weather reduces the number of departures and arrivals airports can safely conduct. Bad weather forces greater separation between aircraft for safety reasons, and every arriving plane is doing a no kidding instrument approach. Sometimes the weather is bad enough to force pilots to fly to divert to their alternate destination, or they have to enter a holding pattern until cleared to land. The cumulative effect of these weather related problems slows everything down and reduces the number of aircraft that can safely operate in a given chunk of airspace or can use a given runway at an airport. The FAA cannot cancel a commercial flight but if the airline finds it cannot get cleared to depart in a timely fashion due to weather delays they may cancel the fight.

I have heard that there are always cancellations at the end of a month as many pilots reach the maximum hours that they are allowed to fly every month. Avoid travelling near the end of the month particularly in months with 31 days.