U.S. extends mask rule for travel while weighing new approach
The mask mandate was scheduled to expire March 18, but the Transportation Security Administration said Thursday that it will extend the requirement through April 18.
The mask mandate was scheduled to expire March 18, but the Transportation Security Administration said Thursday that it will extend the requirement through April 18.
The airport anticipates airlines will offer more than 110,000 passenger seats per week during March in response to pent-up demand for leisure travel.
Frontier is offering to buy Spirit Airlines in a $2.9 billion cash-and-stock deal that will create the nation’s fifth largest carrier. The companies foresee adding 10,000 jobs internally.
In a letter to the Justice Department Attorney General Merrick Garland dated Thursday, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said there should be “zero tolerance” for any behavior that affects flight safety.
Lawmakers wondered aloud Thursday how a showdown between two federal agencies over the rollout of new high-speed wireless service reached crisis proportions last month.
The storm is the latest wintry headache for an industry that spent part of December and January recovering from several thousand canceled flights amid heavy snow and staffing shortages fueled by the omicron variant.
“Around the country, we’re planning to operate a limited or reduced schedule from some cities in the path of the storm but will make adjustments to the schedule as needed,” Southwest Airlines spokesman Dan Landson said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it took the steps after receiving details from the telecommunications companies about the location of wireless transmitters.
Airlines had canceled more than 320 flights by Wednesday evening, or a little over 2% of the U.S. total, according to FlightAware.
Allegiant Airlines—which operates a major base in Indianapolis—is reversing a strategy of keeping costs low by flying only Airbus SE planes that it typically leased or purchased used.
A winter storm that hit the mid-Atlantic on Monday combined with pandemic-caused shortages of airline workers to push flight cancellations to a holiday-season high, creating more frustration for travelers just trying to get home.
Indianapolis International Airport officials announced Monday that the airline would offer service to Indianapolis from Savannah, Georgia, and Birmingham and Huntsville, Alabama.
At 6:30 p.m. Sunday, the number of cancellations stood at 2,560 nationwide and was slowly rising, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks commercial aviation. More than 2,700 flights were canceled Saturday.
By late Saturday afternoon on the East Coast, more than 2,600 U.S. flights and nearly 4,600 worldwide had been canceled, according to tracking service FlightAware.
Omicron has intensified already significant staffing issues for airlines, which winnowed workforces in 2020 as air travel collapsed, only to be broadsided when vaccination rates jumped and millions of people felt comfortable flying again this year.
The Biden administration has thus far balked at imposing a vaccination requirement for domestic air travel. Two officials said Biden’s science advisers have yet to make a formal recommendation for such a requirement to the president.
Airlines have canceled roughly 4,000 flights to, from or inside the U.S. since Friday. Delta, United, JetBlue and American have all said that the coronavirus was causing staffing problems.
Globally, airlines scrapped more than 2,700 flights as of Sunday evening, nearing the more than 2,800 cancellations the day before.
The U.S. airlines said they were working hard to accommodate as many passengers as possible, but the disruption comes during one of the busiest travel periods in years.
Passengers should avoid face-to-face contact and surfaces that are frequently touched, and people sitting near to each other should try not to be unmasked at the same time during meals, according to the top medical adviser to the world’s airlines.