British Airways scraps proposed London-to-Indianapolis flight for 2022
The airline had eyed a slot at London’s Heathrow Airport for a flight to Indianapolis, but routes to Pittsburgh and Portland, Oregon, were the only two ultimately awarded.
The airline had eyed a slot at London’s Heathrow Airport for a flight to Indianapolis, but routes to Pittsburgh and Portland, Oregon, were the only two ultimately awarded.
Airlines are having trouble hiring pilots, flight attendants and other personnel, and that’s part of what is causing canceled flights and scrapping of service to some airports, executives told legislators on Wednesday.
The legislation would require that fees be “reasonable and proportional” to the airline’s cost of providing the service. It will also require airlines to let children under 14 sit with family members at no extra charge.
If the route becomes official, it would be the first trans-Atlantic flight from the Indianapolis since Delta Air Lines discontinued its Paris flight in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The pandemic-related restrictions have closed the United States to millions of people for 20 months.
Like other airlines, American encouraged thousands of workers to quit last year when air travel collapsed during the pandemic, only to be caught short-staffed this year when travel recovered faster than expected.
The razor-thin staffing that contributed to thousands of canceled U.S. passenger flights in October doesn’t bode well for smooth holiday travel.
The disruptions were similar in their initial cause and size to problems suffered in early October by Southwest Airlines, and they raised ominous questions about whether major airlines are prepared for the busy upcoming holiday travel period.
Indianapolis-based Republic Airways announced plans Thursday to start what it says is the state’s first aircraft dispatch training program.
The Federal Aviation Administration proposed Thursday that flight attendants get 10 consecutive hours of rest between shifts. The proposal does not change the current 14-hour limit on a flight attendant’s work day.
The decision to pare service highlights the difficulty that Southwest and other carriers have had adding workers since the summer, when demand surged more than expected after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.
Neither the company nor its pilots’ union has provided evidence to back up their explanations for why nearly 2,400 flights were canceled from Saturday through Monday.
Southwest Airlines canceled more than 350 flights Monday following a weekend of major disruptions that it blamed on bad weather and air traffic control issues.
By late morning Monday, Southwest had canceled about 365 flights—10% of its schedule for the day—and more than 600 others were delayed.
The airline canceled more than 1,000 flights in total, or 29% of its schedule, as of 7 p.m. Sunday, according to flight tracker FlightAware. That was the highest rate by far of the major U.S. airlines.
Southwest said it has to mandate vaccines because of new rules from the Biden administration requiring companies with federal contracts to have vaccinated staffs.
Last month, United set a deadline of Sept. 27–next Monday–for its 67,000 U.S.-based employees to get vaccinated or face termination.
The Justice Department said Tuesday that the agreement between the airlines will eliminate important competition in New York and Boston and reduce JetBlue’s incentive to compete against American in other parts of the country.
Republic, which provides passenger flights that operate under the flags of major airlines, plans to move about 1,900 jobs to Carmel, the city said in a news release. Its headquarters is now at 8909 Purdue Road.
The travel bans had become the source of growing geopolitical frustration, particularly among allies in the United Kingdom and European Union.