Flight Delays, Cancellations Lessen but Frustrations Grow

A little more than 2,400 domestic flights were canceled during the long Fourth of July Holiday Weekend from Friday, July 1 through Tuesday, July 5, a number that is still embarrassingly high but down from the 2,600+ canceled flights over Memorial Day Weekend earlier this year.

And it was also down from the three-day Father’s Day/Juneteenth holiday weekend three weeks ago when more than 3,000 flights were canceled.

Over the four days between Friday and Monday, the Transportation Security Administration also reported it screened more than 8.8 million passengers – the busiest four-day period of 2022 and proof that pent-up demand for travel is real, as tourists eschewed rising airfares, crowded airports, delays and cancellations.

“U.S. airlines were pleased to welcome millions of air travelers back to the skies to celebrate the Fourth of July,” the Airlines for America trade group said in an emailed statement to the Washington Post. “Carriers always strive to provide a seamless travel experience and made every effort — including trimming schedules and increasing communication with travelers — to do so over the holiday weekend.”

But while the airlines might be getting better, the situation isn’t over.

“We expect the summer travel season to remain busy, and we encourage passengers to arrive at the airport in plenty of time to park, check-in, check bags, get through the checkpoint with identification in hand and get to their gates in time for boarding,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a statement Tuesday.

As travel expert Peter Greenberg noted on CBS News, for every 12 hours that there is a travel disruption from delays or cancellations, it takes 36 hours for an airline to get back to a normal schedule. When you add all that up over a period of days and weeks, getting back to “normal” could take weeks and months.