American Airlines and its passengers had a very bad Halloween weekend. More than 1,750 flights have been canceled by the airline since Friday with Monday not starting off much better. The airline is blaming strong winds and staffing shortages for the cancelations.

Cancelations are becoming a normal way of operating for airlines post-pandemic. With travel restrictions lifting and demand rebounding with passengers willing to hop on a plane now, the airlines are scrambling to keep up. As I write this early Monday morning, over 200 flights have already been canceled for today. The week is getting off to a bad start for many travelers. On Friday, the airline canceled 340 flights, 540 were canceled on Saturday, and 650 flights were canceled on Sunday. There was some really strong wind in the Dallas area where American Airlines is headquartered, but the wind wasn’t the problem all weekend. This is a continuation of staffing shortages.

In a letter to employees obtained by The Epoch Times, Chief Operating Officer David Seymour blamed “severe winds” in the area of its Dallas-Fort Worth hub.

“With additional weather throughout the system, our staffing begins to run tight as crew members end up out of their regular flight sequences,” he said. “To make sure we are taking care of our customers and providing scheduling certainty for our crews, we have adjusted our operation for the last few days this month by proactively canceling some flights.”

American said it expects the issues to be resolved soon.

“Soon” isn’t going to be a huge comfort to air travelers using American Airlines, though. The problem with cancelations, besides the inconvenience of rebooking flights and making other arrangements, is that they cause a domino effect. Cancelations cause more cancelations and the problems snowball. There were very long lines of frustrated customers shown in news reports over the weekend who were waiting to be helped by airline agents at various airports.

The cancelations are not connected to COVID-19 vaccine mandates on American Airlines employees, according to a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association. The weather was a catalyst but the problem is caused by a lack of proper management of scheduling staff for the flights. Ticket sales are rebounding as people are eager to travel after the extended lockdowns during the pandemic and feel more comfortable about traveling by plane. Airlines aren’t keeping up with rehiring employees who were furloughed or hiring new employees to replace those who moved on to other employment.

“Management is failing at the most fundamental part of running an airline. Connecting crews to the airplane. Our employees are suffering this failure as much as passengers as crews are stuck out into their days off while scrambling to find hotels,” he said.

“Mother nature generates a storm and management’s failure to properly schedule creates storms days after.”

Of the flights canceled on Oct. 30, all but around a dozen were due to the inability to connect workers to airplanes, Tajer said.

Most airlines are walking back their stringent mandates for employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19 by certain deadlines or face termination. American announced its COVID-19 vaccine mandate on Oct. 1. On that day, Doug Parker, American’s CEO, released a memorandum stating that employees who choose to not be vaccinated for COVID-19 will not be able to continue working for American. Employees were given a deadline of November 24 to be fully vaccinated or face termination.

Flight cancelations cause other flights to be delayed. American delayed hundreds of flights during the course of the Halloween weekend, according to FlightAware, a tracking site. For example, there were 73 flight delays on Sunday.

The busy holiday traveling season is almost here. So, what is American doing to ease the problems it is facing with customer service?

American said that nearly 1,800 flight attendants who were on leave would be returning to work soon and that it was hiring over 600 more flight attendants in addition to working to hire 4,000 workers for other positions.

“The hiring of pilots and within tech ops continues to take place, and we already began ramping up hiring in reservations so more team members will be in place for the holiday season,” it said.

I guess I don’t understand what the hold-up is on bringing employees who were furloughed back to work, or, for that matter, hiring new employees. Airlines received millions of taxpayer dollars as relief funding during the pandemic. Air travelers should expect a better, faster response from management. Granted, the explosion in ticket sales may have caught the airlines off guard but why continue selling tickets if staff isn’t available to work on the flights? It seems the airlines are shooting themselves in the foot. If management doesn’t step up and make the adjustments necessary to keep up with demand, the holiday travel season will be even more of a nightmare for travelers than it can normally be.

Bad weather causes flight delays and cancelations all the time. Without adequate staffing, though, cancelations can’t just be blamed on the weather. The airline said it is being “proactive” and canceling flights.

“To make sure we are taking care of our customers and providing scheduling certainty for our crews, we have adjusted our operation for the last few days this month by proactively canceling some flights,” the airline said in a statement.

This week isn’t off to a great start for travelers. So far 9% of American Airlines flights have already been canceled for today.

The airline has canceled 265 flights, or 9% of its schedule, and delayed more than 100 other 100 flights as of 8 a.m. ET, according to flight tracker FlightAware.

Monday’s cancellations bring the airline’s total flight cancellations since Friday to more than 2,200.

Plan accordingly.