DETROIT – Delta Air Lines canceled about 100 flights on Sunday due to staff shortages and opened medium-sized seats a month earlier than expected to be able to carry more passengers.
The airline says it had more than a million passengers in recent days, the highest figure since the coronavirus pandemic began last year.
“We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and most have been booked for the same day of travel,” the airline said in a statement on Sunday.
Delta DAL,
took steps to increase passenger capacity, including the opening of middle seats on Sunday and Monday, in an effort to accommodate passengers.
On Wednesday, the airline announced it would stop blocking mid-sized seats from May. The move was made last April to keep passengers further away, a policy the Delta CEO had cited several times as an increase in confidence in the airline. Seats will reopen as air travel recovers and more people will be vaccinated against COVID-19, the airline said.
Delta said the intermediate seats only opened on Sunday and Monday, and that its seat lock policy has not changed. When necessary, the seats could be unlocked in order to get customers to their destination on the same day.
“Delta teams have been working through a number of factors, including staff, a large number of employee shots and pilots returning to work,” the airline said in the statement. Some employees had adverse side effects from being vaccinated.
On Sunday, the websites of three Delta centers showed 33 canceled arrival or departure flights. There were 19 at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, 11 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and three more at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.
Delta said Wednesday that nearly 65 percent of people who flew to Delta last year expect to have at least one dose of the new vaccines on May 1st. That gave Delta the security to end seat limits, he said.
The airline industry was divided over the usefulness of locking the middle seats to reduce the risk of extending COVID-19 on a flight. Airlines such as Delta, Southwest LUV,
Alaska ALK,
and JetBlue JBLU,
limited seats for months, while United Airlines UAL,
never did and the American AAL
he did so only briefly.
Social distancing is difficult, if not impossible, on a plane, even with half-empty seats, a point United CEO Scott Kirby made many times to explain his airline’s resistance to the blockade. of seats.
Air travel to the United States recovers from pandemic lows. More than a million passengers have passed through U.S. airports over each of the past 20 days, although March traffic continues to drop by almost half compared to the same month in 2019.
The numbers are rising towards the crucial summer holiday season. Last summer was a disaster for the airlines, which contributed to Delta’s loss of more than $ 12 billion year-round. Airlines want to increase revenue as quickly as possible, and that means selling more seats.