Labor Day air travel a smoother flying experience, experts say

Airline travel during the Labor Day holiday weekend, including at New York metro area airports, bucked the summer trend and offered weary passengers a breezier flying experience, experts said.

Fewer than 1% of flights were canceled nationwide on Saturday and Sunday and roughly 16% of flights overall were delayed, less than the overall averages seen this summer, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking company.

From Memorial Day through the summer months, an average of 2% of flights were canceled and roughly 20 to 22% of flights were delayed nationwide, according to Kathleen Bangs, a former pilot and spokesperson for FlightAware.

“So far over the long Labor Day holiday weekend, airline travel has operated fairly smoothly, in part due to sunny weather over much of the U.S. Additionally, the airlines were better prepared going into the final big holiday travel weekend of the summer as evidenced by lower overall flight cancellations,” Bangs said in an email.

Cancellation rates over 1% could have a rippling effect on the system, experts previously said.

On Sunday, there were 37 flights canceled and 147 delays at LaGuardia Airport for flights within, into or out of the country, according to FlightAware. At Kennedy Airport, there were 30 cancellations and 261 delays on Sunday for all flights that touched U.S. soil. Meanwhile, Long Island MacArthur Airport had no cancellations and four flight delays that day.

“You saw summer come in like a lion but really come out like a lamb … with what I would argue is the best-case scenario,” Scott Keyes, founder and CEO of Scott’s Cheap Flights, said by phone.

This follows a disruptive flying season that in early June hit a peak with over 1 in 4 flights nationwide delayed and as many as 3% of flights canceled, Keyes said.

Airlines have struggled to meet skyrocketing travel demand that plummeted at the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and resulted in half of the nation’s airline fleet being grounded as many pilots accepted early retirement packages, according to experts.

Airlines have blamed the disruption on a tight labor market and also pointed fingers at the Federal Aviation Administration, which hires air traffic controllers.

This summer, major carriers started trimming schedules and ramped up hiring and pilot training efforts, experts said.

National airport travel volumes on Saturday exceeded 2019 figures. There were 1,896,858 travelers who passed through airport checkpoints on Saturday, compared with 1,755,502 during the same weekday in 2019, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

Keyes said airlines and passengers hope for a reduction in “blue skies cancellations,” which take place when the weather is clear.

“You had big problems with that early in the summer and we basically have not seen that much at all this weekend and that’s as much as we could have hoped for,” Keyes said.

Airline reliability is expected to improve more in the fall when travel demand typically drops. But some experts warn that challenges may still arise during holiday travel periods.

By Lorena Mongelli

lorena.mongelli@newsday.com

Lorena Mongelli has been reporting for Newsday since 2021. Prior to that, she covered breaking news at the New York Post.