Flight Delay/Cancellation

DW and I have a pretty simple rule. We check the slowest transportation option, and we depart before that.

We live near Paris, cruising from Barcelona? sure, we would need two days if we were to rent a car, so we're flying two days earlier.

About to go to the aiport? Nice, this is a 30 mins uber trip but we would need maybe 2 hours using public transportation, so we're going call the uber 3 hours before.
 
We flew Atlanta to key west on delta on 5/14 and back on 5/21. Not a single delay on either end. We did fly thru storms on the way back, but landed on time.
 
We just flew Southwest & Delta from Upstate NY to Jacksonville and back. Slight delays on 3 out of the 4 legs - approximately 30-45 minutes. Our SW flight going down was the only flight of the day and the Delta back was one of the first flights out.

I'd still be 100% fine booking a flight the day before a cruise. We tend to stick with major airlines and prefer first flights out of the day in general, so I'm comfortable with that. If it were Allegiant/Spirit/Frontier/whatever that tend to only have one flight out every 3 days? I'd probably spend the extra money for piece of mind.

Add JetBlue to the bad list. In March (most recent data), their on time performance and cancelations were worse than Allegiant and Frontier! And unbelievably bad achievement for what used to be a good airline. They are having serious problems.

I flew Delta many times the past year and have only had slight delays. Yes, they have had their issues, and I'm not happy with their obscene prices combined with service cutting recently (reminds me of a certain other company we all love), but they are still always one of the top performers. Even on their realy bad days, when their issues make news, odds are low that you will be canceled. Out of thousands of flights each day, the vast majority get where they are supposed to go and even usually on time.
 
The airlines are the ones saying that. They say staff are refusing to return to work since the mask requirement on planes was lifted. They would know.
I read a lot of airline news, and haven't seen that reported by any of the major airline CEO's or executives. Instead, they are saying they cut too deeply during the pandemic, didn't anticipate demand returning so quickly, are hiring as fast as they can, but training takes time. I haven't read a single executive say they lost staff when the mask rules were dropped. Particularly since staffing issues started months before masks were lifted.

P.S. It's a pilot shortage that is causing the most pain right now, and I highly doubt pilots are refusing to fly in a closed cockpit because their are maskless passengers in the back.
 
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I read a lot of airline news, and haven't seen that reported by any of the major airline CEO's or executives. Instead, they are saying they cut too deeply during the pandemic, didn't anticipate demand returning so quickly, are hiring as fast as they can, but training takes time. I haven't read a single executive say they lost staff when the mask rules were dropped. Particularly since staffing issues started months before masks were lifted.

P.S. It's a pilot shortage that is causing the most pain right now, and I highly doubt pilots are refusing to fly in a closed cockpit because their are maskless passengers in the back.
I haven’t seen this anywhere either and I read/watch quite a bit of airline/aviation news.
 
I read a lot of airline news, and haven't seen that reported by any of the major airline CEO's or executives. Instead, they are saying they cut too deeply during the pandemic, didn't anticipate demand returning so quickly, are hiring as fast as they can, but training takes time. I haven't read a single executive say they lost staff when the mask rules were dropped. Particularly since staffing issues started months before masks were lifted.

P.S. It's a pilot shortage that is causing the most pain right now, and I highly doubt pilots are refusing to fly in a closed cockpit because their are maskless passengers in the back.
Here you go, some reading on the impact of the mask requirement being lifted on plane on staff being willing to work.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airlines-face-mask-covid-rules-flights-canceled/

https://consumer.healthday.com/hund...eled-after-mask-rules-dropped-2657116960.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/22/covid-mask-mandate-us-transportation-experts

https://www.wired.com/story/why-airport-crowding-is-so-bad/
 

None of the articles support the proposition that staffing shortages are caused by staff unwilling to work with the mask mandate dropped. The first few articles say that when the mandates were dropped in Europe, there was an increased number of crews out with covid. The last article supports my point that the staffing issues are because they cut too deep and demand is now too high. And the second to last article actually contradicts your statement, saying flight crews didn't want to police masks anymore and it was leading to worse working conditions for them because of non-compliant angry passengers, hence the airlines had been pushing to remove the mandate.

As for the US, I didn't see any news (in your articles or otherwise) that the crews had increased covid rates after masks were dropped, like Europe saw (the timing of the Europe drops was just before Europe covid cases surged again, by the way). But, that wasn't the claim. The claim was that crews were now refusing to work since the mandate ended.

In any case - I don't want to get too far from the topic of the post. Flying is difficult right now because their are crew shortages, whatever the cause. But, speaking from experience, it isn't really that bad if you fly major airlines and give yourself plenty of time for connections. Don't make any reservations with tight connections, and fly out early, and people shouldn't have any problems getting to their cruises in 99% of cases. The news makes it sound worse than it is.
 
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