Detroit-Delta Air Lines canceled about 100 flights on Sunday due to staff shortages, and also made some mid-range seats available a month earlier than anticipated with the goal of transporting more passengers.
The airline has noted that it has served more than a million passengers in recent days, the highest figure since before the coronavirus pandemic began last year.
“We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience, and most were already rescheduled to travel the same day,” the airline said in a statement.
Delta implemented measures to increase the capacity of its flights, including making central seats available on Sunday and Monday in an attempt to accommodate more passengers.
The airline announced on Wednesday that it would stop blocking the sale of center seats from May. The move was taken in April last year in order to maintain greater distance between passengers, an action the company’s CEO reiterated was a factor in raising confidence in the airline. The seats will be made available to the public again at a time when people are flying back and more people are getting vaccinated against covid-19, the company said.
Delta said the central seats would open only for Sunday and Monday, and its measure to block seats for sale remains in effect. When necessary, seats could be occupied with the aim of bringing passengers to their destination on the same day.
“Delta teams have been working amid different factors, including staffing issues, large numbers of vaccinations among employees and what pilots are returning to activity,” the airline said in a statement. Some of the employees experienced adverse side effects to the vaccine.
Websites at three Delta centers showed 33 flights canceled on Sunday. At Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport there were 19, 11 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and three more at Minneapolis-St. Paul.
The company said Wednesday that nearly 65 percent of people who flew with it last year expect to have received at least one dose of the new vaccines by May 1st. This gave Delta the security to put an end to seat limitations, he noted.