American Airlines terminates service to three cities due to lack of pilots

American Airlines will cancel service to three cities after Labor Day weekend as a result of staff shortages, marking the airline industry’s latest turmoil amid thousands of cancellations and cutbacks in recent months.

A spokesperson for the airline said the airline will drop its services to Toledo, Ohio; Ithaca, New York; and Islip, NY, on September 7 in response to a “regional pilot shortage.”

“We are very grateful for the care and service our team members have provided to our clients in Islip, Ithaca and Toledo, and are working closely with them during this time,” the spokesperson said in an email to The Hill. “We will proactively contact customers scheduled to travel after this date to offer alternative arrangements.”

Travel demand has soared, with large numbers of Americans taking trips for the first time since the pandemic began. The Transportation Security Administration said it screened about 2.44 million people at airports Friday, a larger total than on any other day since November 28, 2021.

Meanwhile, airlines have struggled to keep up with rising demand after shedding millions of jobs at the height of the pandemic, sending prices soaring.

It was thousands of flights Canceled or delayed The last weekend before Father’s Day and June th.

Delta Airlines 100 trips cut From its daily schedule between July 1 and August 7, the airline pilots He wrote an open letter to clients It posted Thursday saying they were flying a “record amount” of overtime to reduce the large number of cancellations.

Other airlines have also reduced their schedules. Southwest Airlines cut 20,000 flights this summer, The Dallas Morning News reported.

American is also making changes to eight other routes, which the airline spokesperson said are better suited to the current demand environment. All of these routes include one of the airline’s hub airports as a city of origin or destination.

Three wholly-owned regional airlines — PSA Airlines, Envoy Air and Piedmont Airlines — recently announced contractual agreements with American that include “significant pay increases” as part of efforts to attract and retain pilots, according to the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA). , a pilot union representing employees.

Pilots working for PSA Airlines, which operates 800 daily flights to America, will receive a 50 percent salary increase for two years.

“The new PSA agreements will not only help PSA recruit and retain premium pilots, but will set the standard for other regional carriers to follow,” said John Ebert, president of ALPA’s PSA pilot group, in a statement.