Delta Has Another Holiday Cancellation Mess

Delta Air Lines had another holiday meltdown on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, canceling hundreds of flights because of weather and staffing issues, and stranding thousands of passengers.

The problems came a month after Delta faced a similar nightmare over the Thanksgiving holiday.

The first issue was the weather. On Wednesday, December 23, a snowstorm hit Delta’s hub in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and the airline decided to cancel more than 250 flights that day and on Thursday, Christmas Eve, according to the Washington Post.

Then because of staffing issues, Delta was forced to cancel about 100 more flights scheduled for Friday, Christmas Day.

“A number of factors have pressured our ability to timely staff several dozen scheduled flights on Friday,” Delta spokesman Anthony Black told the Post in an email.

Chris Riggins, a Delta pilot and communications chairman of the Delta Air Lines Master Executive Council of the Air Line Pilots Association, told the paper that “Due to the downsizing of the airline and trying to manage the size of the workforce … there’s been some training issues that’s been created from moving pilots from airplane to airplane and getting them retrained. It’s basically a problem of trying to get the pilots to the right place at the right time.”

According to the aviation blog One Mile At A Time, Delta canceled 530 flights over three days during Thanksgiving. Through Christmas morning, the airline had canceled 373 flights over two-and-a-half days.