The July Fourth holiday weekend is off to a booming start with airport crowds crushing the numbers seen in 2019, before the pandemic.
Travelers across the United States experienced hundreds of canceled flights and a few thousand delays on Friday, much as they did earlier this week.
The Transportation Security Administration screened more than 2.4 million travelers at airport checkpoints on Thursday, 17% more than on the same Friday before July Fourth in 2019. U.S. air travel is likely to set a pandemic-era record at least once over the weekend.AAA predicts that nearly 48 million people will travel at least 50 miles or more from home over the weekend, slightly fewer than in 2019.
If you’re already at the airport when your flight is canceled, “it’s time to flex your multitasking skills,” said Sebastian Modak, editor-at-large of travel guide publisher Lonely Planet. By early evening Friday on the East Coast, airlines had canceled about 500 U.S. flights and another 5,100 were delayed, according to FlightAware. Scattered thunderstorms in the New York City area made it likely the numbers would climb. From June 22 through Wednesday at least 600 flights were canceled, and between 4,000 and 7,000 were delayed per day, the tracking service said.
Delta spokesman Anthony Black would neither confirm nor deny the journalist’s account, but he noted that the airline raised the compensation agents can offer in such cases to $9,950 in 2017. That move followed a public-relations nightmare at United Airlines, when airport officers bloodied and dragged a 69-year-old doctor off a sold-out plane — a case that resulted in a lawsuit, confidential settlement, and jokes on late-night TV about United customer service.
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