According to analysts and even some airline officials, the constant disruptions afflicting airlines in the US and Europe will last through the summer.
The good news for flyers who are already paying high airfares is that the easiest way to alleviate the problem is to further reduce schedules.
Giacomo Palombo, a partner and airline industry analyst at McKinsey, said there's not a lot of possibilities at this point.
The problem of high rates of cancellation and delays in the U.S. has spread to major European cities such as London and Amsterdam as they begin to recover from the Covid-19 Pandemic.
More than half of flights arriving in Europe through June 14 this year had at least some delay, according to data presented by the IATA's regional vice president for Europe. Even though air traffic is restored, the average delay in Europe has already reached the average.
There is bad news as well. The cancellation rate for European commercial flying is around 4%. In May and June, cancellation ran above 5%.
Despite airlines flying less capacity, the cancellation rate for flights into, within or out of the U.S. was 3% this year, up from 2% in the previous year. The DOT defines delayed arrivals as flights that are at least 15 minutes late.
There was a lot of negative press on both sides of the Atlantic in the third weekend of June.
Images of piles of suitcases sitting in limbo, which became popular fodder for TV news broadcasts and newspapers, were created by a baggage-systems malfunction at London Heathrow.
DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg had his own flight canceled the day after he met with airline leaders to discuss disruptions.
Delta, once an industry stalwart for reliability, had an 8% cancellation rate between June 17 and 19
On the day after his flight was canceled, Buttigieg told the Associated Press that the DOT could consider taking enforcement action against airlines that don't meet required standards.
The airlines are frustrated.
"We want to get out of this situation as quickly as possible, and we're working as hard as we can to make sure everything has backups and so on," United chief commercial officer Andrew Nocella said.
He said that the problem is not United's responsibility. Air traffic control staffing shortfalls in Florida have created a situation where weather events have a bigger impact on the U.S. aviation system than normal.
"We've done the best we can to match our ability to fly with the schedule we've put out there," he said. We don't want a flight to be canceled. It's as bad as the consumer.
The extent of operational failures was downplayed by officials.
Willie Walsh, the trade group's director general, said that there are airports that have challenges and airlines that have challenges. There are issues that are isolated.
Walsh said that he flew 57 times this year and only one was disrupted because of a passport-control issue.
To the extent that there are unusual disruption levels, most of the blame falls with airports for failing to staff up properly and with governments that stopped airlines from preparing for the re-emergence. Slow security vetting processes in some countries are slowing efforts by airlines to get back to full staff levels.
Schvartzman wants airports to inform airlines two weeks in advance if they are going to have staffing shortfalls.
There will be reductions if we work together. We know we are late to overcome this for the summer.
Some say that all sectors of the air travel industry need to take responsibility for their failures.
"The whole aviation sector is working so closely together that you can't look at one stakeholder," said McKinsey partner and analystNina Wittkamp.
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