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The recent weekend chaos at US airports has left some wondering what the point was of bailing out the airline industry during the pandemic. But the hundreds of cancelled flights at American Airlines Group show why that aid was needed in the first place.
American scrapped about 775 flights over the weekend and into June 21 as bad weather exacerbated a dearth of flight-ready pilots. Maintenance pileups and hiring logjams at third-party vendors that provide catering and refueling services are also straining the system. To help ease the pressure, the carrier said it would cull about 1% of its planned daily flights through mid-July.
It’s understandable that many people’s initial response to these disruptions is to decry the more than
$50 billion in government aid earmarked for US airline payroll support during the pandemic as ineffective or to argue that the greedy carriers should simply pay workers more. I get it: Airlines are an easy villain in the best of times, and government bailouts are even more unpopular. The contrast between news of a labour crunch and the special dispensation airlines received during the pandemic is jarring. If any industry was going to be immune to hiring struggles in the recovery, this should be it, right? But as with most things in life, the reality is not black and white. Although airlines aren’t blameless, they also aren’t entirely culpable. And if the government hadn’t stepped in, the flying pinch would be much worse.
Remember that the government aid wasn’t constant: The first round of Covid payroll support was allowed to expire at the end of September as politicians bickered about the extent and format of additional stimulus. Airlines were still bleeding cash by the bucketful, so they furloughed tens of thousands of workers. In total, American Airlines dropped 19,000 employees during this period, including some 1,600 pilots.
When Congress finally reached a deal in December to extend the payroll support, those employees were hired back. But the underlying reason they were let go wasn’t magically solved by this cash infusion.
Travel demand remained anemic, and there was little hope of a turnaround in the near term. Indeed, public health officials pleaded with Americans to stay home during the traditionally busy holiday travel season.
—Bloomberg