Friday 24 June 2022 08:57 PM Travel mayhem drags on as 500 flights are canceled and 1K are delayed in the ... trends now
Travel mayhem stretched to the eighth day with thousands of flights delayed and over 500 cancelations in the US, sparking Fourth of July chaos fears.
As of Friday morning, over 2,104 flights were delayed within, into or out of the US, according to FlightAware. An additional 543 flights were canceled across the nation.
Some of the major airlines have been accused of making a bad situation worse as the crisis continues.
Multiple Twitter users accused Delta and American Airlines of leaving them on hold for hours, with one saying they'd been waiting for three days to check in on their over $1,200 Delta reimbursement claim filed nearly three weeks ago and went without response.
Another accused the airline of simply 'ghosting' them by refusing to continue to respond to their complaints in customer service.
Travel mayhem stretched to the eighth day with thousands of flights delayed and over 500 cancelations in the US, sparking Fourth of July chaos fears
American Airlines was criticized by traveler Brayden McMahan, who said his group was given hotel vouchers but they'd been declined at the hotel; he added that three others staying at the same hotel experience the same issue. McMahan's kids were forced to sleep on chairs.
Another flyer, Scott Lincicome, said Delta canceled his flight home because of the weather, then rebooked him for the next morning, saying he couldn't be refunded because of the weather-related cancelation. He saw other airlines in the area take off at around the same time, however.
Other Twitter users posted photos of lost bags piling up at baggage claims and dozens of people on standby, with no one attending their gates.
This comes as U.S. consumers lodged more than triple the number of complaints against U.S. airlines in April, compared with pre-pandemic levels, as on-time arrivals fell, according to a report by the Department of Transportation.
In April, major carriers posted an on-time arrival rate of 76 percent, down from 77.2 percent in March and below the 79.8 percent rate in April 2019, the report said.
Airlines operated 566,893 flights in April, about 87 percent of the flights flown during the same month in 2019.
The grim news foreshadows a potentially busy July 4 holiday, according to AAA, as over 47 million Americans are expected to travel over the holiday weekend, with 3.5 million of those travelers expected to travel by air.
An airline industry trade group on
