American Airlines canceled hundreds of flights during the weekend, citing bad weather and staffing shortages, the company announced in a statement. As of Saturday night, FlightAware, an aviation tracking program, showed 499 flights, or 18% of the airline’s operations, were canceled. In comparison, Southwest, which has fewer flights per day, has canceled 86 flights and delayed 473. As air travel plunged in early 2020, airlines offered buyouts and early retirement packages to employees in order to cut costs. Southwest had an operational meltdown during one weekend in October, canceling more than 2,000 weekend flights.

Source: CNN October 30, 2021 22:15 UTC