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By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The chairman of the US Senate Commerce Committee has asked the CEOs of six airlines, including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways, to explain the worker shortages reported despite the reception billion dollars in pandemic bailouts.
Congress approved three separate rounds of taxpayer funding totaling $ 54 billion to pay a large chunk of U.S. airlines’ wage costs through September 30 due to COVID-19 – as well as $ 25 billion in government loans to low cost.
Democrat Senator Maria Cantwell on Friday sent letters to airlines requesting answers to detailed questions about “recent reports of labor shortages, flight cancellations and delays, creating wreaking havoc and frustrating consumers as more and more Americans resume their trips. “
The Transportation Security Administration said the traffic affected nearly 2.2 million passengers on Sunday, the highest daily total since February 2020.
In the letters, Cantwell said at best that each airline “mismanages its marketing of flights and manpower as more and more people travel, and at worst it has failed to reach the goal of taxpayer funding and to prepare for the wave of travel that we are. now witness. “
Airlines were not allowed to carry out involuntary layoffs or cut workers’ wages as part of government aid.
Cantwell asked the airlines, which also included Republic Airways and Allegiant Airlines, for responses on workforce management, if they had exhausted all U.S. wage support and what to do to address anticipated labor shortages. or current due to increased consumer demand for flights this year.
American Airlines announced in June that it would cancel about 1% of its flights in July, while Southwest canceled hundreds of flights last month over computer and weather issues.
Southwest said it was “the only major airline to maintain service at every US airport we served before the pandemic” and has not laid off or fired any staff.
“We have been staffed for what we steal and we are stealing for what we have staffed,” a spokesperson said.
American and Allegiant declined to comment. Republic and JetBlue did not respond to a request for comment.
Delta pointed to General Manager Ed Bastian’s comments on Wednesday that “the challenges of bringing our airline fully back to the level of service our customers expect and deserve are daunting in light of the huge increase in demand we are experiencing.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson, editing by Sonya Hepinstall, editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
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