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| US May Act Against Airlines on Consumers' Behalf |
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg meets with airline leaders to question them about flight disruptions
The day after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg met with airline leaders to question them about the generalized possibilities of flights, his private flight was canceled and the new flight from Washington "It happens to a lot of people, it happens.
Airlines are pushing to try summer programs to ensure they can run all of their planned flights with employees who have customer service workers.
That could prompt airlines to make additional cuts to their summer schedules. Buttigieg said his department could take coercive action against airlines that do not meet consumer protection standards. But he said she first wanted to know if there were any major hurdles to flights over the festive July 4th weekend and the rest of the summer. As a result of compliance procedures there may be fines, although they are small.
Air Canada agreed to pay $2 million last year due to slow compensation. During Thursday's virtual meeting, airline officials described steps taken to avoid a repeat of Memorial Day when some 2,800 flights were canceled.
"Now let's see how these steps compare," Buttigieg said. Flights are back. On Friday, more than 2.4 million people passed through US airport security controls. The United States, and their number was about 12,500 to break the epidemic era recorded on the Sunday after Thanksgiving last year. Sure enough, the record could have been broken had airlines not canceled 1,400 flights, many of them due to the deaths of East Coast members of the Darkness.
According to the flight tracking service, the day before, airlines canceled more than 1,700 flights. Climate is always a wildcard when it comes to flying in the summer, but airlines have also realized staff shortages as the travel epidemic has fallen faster than expected from the bottom line. Airlines are trying to hire pilots and other workers to replace employees who encouraged them to quit after the shock of the pandemic. It takes months to hire and train a pilot to comply with federal safety standards, but the Department of Transportation sees no reason why.
Airlines cannot immediately add customer service representatives to assist with booking passengers if government employee challenges are canceled by not adding customer service representatives immediately. The decline in the federal administration for part of the Buttigieg administration contributed to the delays in flights in Florida. The FAA promises to increase the number of staff there. The Transportation Safety Administration, an agency within the National Security Administration, has created a travel force of 1,000 inspectors who can be sent to the airport where the lines at control points are very long.