CNN
—
What a distinction one yr could make – as many individuals who traveled by air in the course of the now-notorious final week of 2022 may let you know. However on the tail finish of 2023, you’d largely hear tales of enchancment.
As the times between Christmas and New 12 months’s tick off, airways are persevering with their streak of few flight cancelations after final yr’s disastrous holiday travel meltdown.
Figures from FlightAware present that US carriers have canceled lower than 1% of all flights over the previous week. Airways scheduled greater than 162,000 flights from December 20 to 26 and canceled simply 1,100 of them.
The FAA has warned that floor stops may go into place Wednesday for flights departing for main East coast airports in Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Washington as pilots and air visitors controllers battle low cloud ceilings and diminished visibility. However as of three p.m. ET, these floor stops have but to materialize. Airways have canceled solely 129 flights in the USA and delayed one other 3,800, in response to FlightAware.
The scene is diametrically against Southwest Airlines’ schedule meltdown over the past 10 days of 2022, which prompted the cancelation of 16,900 flights and left two million passengers stranded.
Even nonetheless, Southwest Airways has delayed essentially the most flights of any US service in the course of the vacation rush — roughly one in 4 flights over the past week.
From December 20 to 26, Southwest delayed 27% of its schedule, or 8,096 flights. Solely 2% of Southwest flights have been canceled over the identical interval. Southwest delayed one other 985 flights — or one in 5 flights scheduled — on Wednesday.
Delays over the past week peaked on Tuesday, when US airways delayed practically 28% of all flights which arrived a mean of 52 minutes late, in response to FlightAware figures.
“There’s a giant distinction between a delay and a cancellation,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated final week throughout a information convention.
Buttigieg harassed the speed of flight cancelations are what he considers “wholesome,” however “that does invite us to pay extra consideration to the difficulty of delays and to press the airways on how they’re behaving.”
American Airways stated late Tuesday {that a} handful of its regional flights have been canceled due to climate, boasting that it “continues to have the fewest cancellations amongst main carriers this vacation interval.”