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| Photo Credit: AP. |
The US may act against American airlines over increasing flight cancelations as the July 4 holidays draw close. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg who met with airline leaders to express concerns about widespread flight cancellations said the flight disruptions is happening to a lot of people and hence the government was paying close attention.
Mr Buttigieg’s
flight was cancelled and he had to drive from Washington to New York.
“That is
happening to a lot of people, and that is exactly why we are paying close
attention here to what can be done and how to make sure that the airlines are
delivering,” Buttigieg told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday.
Mr Buttigieg
said he is pushing the airlines to stress-test their summer schedules to ensure
they can operate all their planned flights with the employees they have, and to
add customer-service workers, according to The Associated Press.
The Transportation
Secretary said his department could take enforcement actions against airlines
that fail to live up to consumer-protection standards, The Associated Press reported.
He said he wants to see if there will be major flight disruptions over the July
Fourth holiday weekend and the rest of the summer holidays before considering
what possible actions may be taken against the airlines.
Some
airlines may face small fines as part of enforcement actions just as Air Canada
was fined $2 million last year over delayed ticket refunds.
On Thursday
Buttigieg had a virtual meeting with airline executives who told him about
steps they were taking to avoid a repeat of the Memorial Day weekend which saw
about 2,800 flights cancelled.
“Now we’re
going to see how those steps measure up,” Buttigieg said, according to The
Associated Press.
Some of the
flight disruptions during the summer holiday are the result of bad weather and
inadequate pilots trained to meet federal safety standards. The hiring and
training of pilots to meet these standards take months but the Transportation
Department wants airlines to hire additional customer service representatives
to help customers rebook flights where they have been cancelled.
According to
The Associated Press, more than 2.4 million people passed through security
checkpoints at U.S. airports on Friday.
More than
1,700 flights were canceled on Thursday, according to tracking
serviceFlightAware.