The newest savior of Manchester airport is looking pretty tarnished these days.
Spirit Airlines canceled 60% of its flights Wednesday and apologized to customers for severe disruptions in recent days. Things have been so bad for the low-cost carrier that the union representing Spirit’s flight attendants said the Florida-based company was addressing the meltdown with procedures developed to recover from hurricanes.
The turmoil comes two months before Spirit is set to begin flights from Manchester-Boston Regional Airport to Ft. Lauderdale and Orlando, which will make it the first new airline to set up shop in the Queen City since 2004.
Officials with the airport, city of Manchester and the state have excitedly promoted Spirit’s arrival as an indication that the long decline in usage of New Hampshire’s biggest airport has finally ended.
The hope now is that Spirit will have ironed out its problems before October. The airline’s arrival at Manchester-Boston is still on schedule, Airport Director Ted Kitchens said Friday, including the addition of four-times-weekly service to Fort Myers on Nov. 17 and three-times-weekly service to Tampa on Nov. 18.
“We continue to work with the team at Spirit towards a successful launch of service,” he wrote in an email.
Spirit’s woes are the latest for an industry strained by rising demand on the heels of a pandemic-induced slump in travel.
Experts say some carriers are facing difficulties in finding pilots, flight attendants and ground crew to service flights as they recover from historic declines in air travel, leaving them vulnerable when more routine problems occur.
“This is the last best chance for airlines to make revenue – and the demand is there,” said Jon Jager, an analyst at aviation data firm Cirium and a former schedule planner for a major U.S. carrier. “People are wanting to travel. This causes pressure on the airline to maximize their schedule with fewer employees available to work due to pandemic staffing levels.”
Southwest Airlines, the nation’s fourth-largest air carrier and by far the biggest carrier at Manchester-Boston, faced disruptions in late June and around the July Fourth holiday, spurring a surge in cancellations and delays.
The airline canceled more than 800 flights over two days this week, including 61% of its Tuesday flights, according to aviation firm FlightAware. The company blamed “overlapping operational challenges” for the problems. It said a combination of bad weather, computer problems and staffing shortages caused “widespread irregularities” – issues exacerbated by high levels of summer travel and fuller flights industry-wide.
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents nearly 50,000 flight attendants at 17 airlines, including those at Spirit, said the airline had an IT outage Tuesday that prevented employees from using the crew scheduling system for more than an hour, compounding other challenges and stymieing efforts to rearrange flight plans for flight attendants.
American Airlines faced significant cancellations earlier this week from storms at its Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport hub.
“It was sustained wind, hail and rain. It was not a great situation for the operation,” said American spokesman Curtis Blessing. “The result of that has been weather recovery for the last couple days.”
Scores of diverted planes Sunday left crews out of position, he said, leaving lingering effects. “We’re coming out of it,” Blessing said.
FlightAware data indicates American canceled 377 flights, or 12% of its total, on Tuesday. It canceled more than 100 flights Wednesday.
Southwest also faced weather-related delays Tuesday, with 1,215 of its flights – about one-third of them – coming in late.
The delays are coming as the Transportation Security Administration said it screened 1,797,120 people Tuesday, compared with 543,601 on the same day last year and 2,387,115 in 2019. Tuesday’s total was the lowest checkpoint volume at the nation’s airports since June 22.
Tuesday’s dip in screenings came two days after a pandemic-era high on Sunday, when more than 2.2 million passengers moved through airport checkpoints.
The TSA has battled its own staffing struggles in recent months, alongside those of airlines.
The acting head of the agency issued a memo earlier this summer warning that the nation’s largest airports would face shortages and asked office workers to volunteer to assist with checkpoints, such as managing queues and aiding with administrative tasks.
The agency has promised recurring monthly bonuses, allowed part-time workers to become full-time, adjusted shifts and increased the use of overtime.
