Planning A July Vacation? Hopefully Not With American Airlines

According to an American Airlines spokesperson, the airline will be canceling hundreds of flights through mid-July, at least. CNN reports that they are citing a labor shortage that companies are seeing across the nation. Also, operations were affected by bad weather earlier this month.

Spokesperson Shannon Gilson recently told CNN, "The first few weeks of June have brought unprecedented weather to our largest hubs, heavily impacting our operation and causing delays, canceled flights, and disruptions to crew member schedules and our customers’ plans. That, combined with the labor shortages some of our vendors are contending with and the incredibly quick ramp-up of customer demand has led us to build in additional resilience and certainty to our operation by adjusting a fraction of our scheduled flying through mid-July."

The airline canceled 123 flights Saturday, 178 on Sunday, and 97 on Monday. American expects to cancel 50 to 80 flights per day through July. The increase in flight traffic comes as people are looking to travel more. COVID case numbers continue to drop across the United States and more and more people want to plan a getaway for the summer.

As more people return to flying, it's not good to have significant staffing issues. Factor in some maintenance issues and the process of canceling flights may continue.

Spokesperson Gilson says that American Airlines will attempt to notify customers well in advance of their flights in the event that if their flight has been canceled they can make the appropriate travel adjustments to get to their destination.

For more on the story, please visit CNN's website here.