Industry Expert Explains Why Flying Sucks Now

Photo: Kevin Dietsch / Staff (Getty Images)

It’s no secret that flying has gotten worse since the pandemic started. Flights get canceled, airlines shut down their customer service line, holiday travel gets ruined and there are no signs that it will get better any time soon. So if you’ve had a bad experience lately, at least you know you’re not alone. That doesn’t exactly make things better, but hey, at least it’s something?

Can You Get it With a Manual?

In case you missed it:

Recently, Slate sat down with Jon Ostrower, editor-in-chief of the Air Current to talk about why air travel has gotten so bad over the last couple of years. If you’re at all interested in flying, it’s a great read. The interview touches on Southwest and all the problems it’s had with its systems lately. We also learned that 40 percent of Southwest’s planes touch down in Florida each day. It’s not the most important detail, but it’s definitely higher than we would have guessed. Then again, it’s not entirely surprising since Southwest definitely feels like a Florida airline.

But as Ostrower makes clear, it’s not just Southwest that’s causing problems. All airlines are dealing with the consequences of cutting staff during the pandemic. As he told Slate:

Let’s put it this way: You can’t fly a 2019 schedule unless you have a 2019 number of pilots, or airplanes, or folks at the gate, or handling baggage or maintenance. So the system’s capacity is ultimately limited. All of this is happening as the U.S. economy bounces back from COVID—people want to get back out traveling again. The U.S. economy itself at a GDP basis is larger than it was before COVID, and air travel demand and GDP are very closely tied. As the U.S. economy comes back, the airlines just cannot accommodate that level of demand, including all of the pilots that need to get trained and retrained.

But even if staffing wasn’t an issue, there’s still another problem: Airlines reportedly can’t get all of the new planes they need due to a limited supply of engines. Then again, that may be a blessing in disguise because air traffic control is still struggling to safely manage the planes that are already in use. These are fixable issues, but unfortunately for passengers, it’s likely going to take a long time to fix them.

There’s so much more to the interview that we couldn’t include here, from problems with upgrading airlines’ IT systems to the Next Generation Air Transportation System, and even the FAA’s upcoming reauthorization from Congress. Be sure to head over to Slate and give it a read.