Vaccine mandates won’t fly: Air travel disruptions and the outlook for airlines

American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have experienced thousands of flight cancellations of late

Oct 31, 2021

Planes taxiing — Image: FAA Public Domain

This past weekend an in-law of mine flew down for the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party—the Georgia vs. Florida college football game in Jacksonville, Florida. I had heard his connecting flight out of Charlotte, North Carolina was canceled. No reason was given by American Airlines.

Throughout Saturday, Twitter was abuzz with the news of American Airlines’ widespread cancelations. The current flight count as I write is over 1,000, blaming weather and staffing shortages. A fellow peer in Southwest Airlines also experienced a cluster of flight cancelations topping 1,800 just a few weeks ago for the very same reasons.

Flight cancelations are nothing new nor unusual. What is unique this time are the circumstances. Many airlines in compliance with the COVID vaccine edict on federal contractors are instituting such mandates. The deadline for American Airlines employees to submit exemptions or acquire vaccination is November 24th.1 The mandate on federal employees is November 22 and for contractors, December 8th, 2021.2

Informal protests have sprouted up at both Southwest and American. Engaging in a formal union strike carries certain procedural actions by union leadership, and so currently union members are not technically able to organize such a move on their own. Rumors swirling are upticks in employee sick time usage driving these abrupt bursts in flight cancelations for both airlines. This makes sense as rebalancing personnel routes and planning would have averted such rampant disruptions if these were foreseeable staffing issues. They were not.

Blaming the weather seems to always be paired with the staffing excuse, but it doesn’t add up. The Doppler radar for the US was relatively benign over the weekend with rainstorms concentrated in the northeast. NOAA weather warnings were exclusively in Alaska or Canada with not a mention of the continental United States. Weather? Really?

Image: NOAA Doppler Radar 10-30-2021 Public Domain

Another theory pitched by the media was the airlines laid off thousands during the pandemic. If that’s the case, what’s the deal with the slew of abrupt flight cancelations? Employees laid off in 2020 are just now impacting thousands of flights over one random weekend a year later? It doesn’t fly. Routes were trimmed accordingly and that was done over a year ago. These trips voided over the weekend were planned well after the layoffs and reductions in staffing.

That leaves some form of mandate protests the culprit. Now, we don’t know the extent of the impact yet as the mandate deadlines are still weeks away. As we approach those dates, thousands of exemption requests will likely be granted. A smaller minority of workers will quit in protest. That’s the best case scenario. Things may develop differently.

Wildcards are in play. A number of airlines are instituting the same policies around the same timeframe. This raises the likelihood of an unexpected outcome to arise. One of those could be a labor strike, or a general refusal to the mandates. If that’s the case, obviously sustained disruptions will be a chronic problem going forward.

Where we get from here is how the quality of air travel will deteriorate. When COVID hit, planes were empty. Tickets could be had going cross country for $4 without any clever effort. As a result, routes were slashed to reduce capacity. The consequence of that is buoying flight prices as supply decreases while demand bounces back. With these mandates impacting a slice of the airlines’ workforces, that puts further pressure on reduction in services. Supply continues to shrink, prices continue to rise, and consumers have fewer options to travel.

What happens when these workers are granted exemptions, but must submit to routine weekly testing? Although the mandate does not provide for weekly testing for federal contractors (unlike the looming OSHA mandate), regular testing will likely be the reasonable accommodation when exemptions are approved. How long will workers put up with weekly testing? And what happens when the requirement shifts to testing anytime you enter the job site? Obviously it’s an untenable policy. Oddly, this also applies to remote workers. A negative test anytime you login from your house?

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The fallout of this will be evidenced in workplace protests. This is all occurring right before the holiday travel season. While Thanksgiving may squeak by, Christmas and New Years’ look to be nightmares of cancelations due to staffing shortages and, of course, “weather,” whether it is or not. By then, exempted pilots and crew will have undergone a month’s worth of regular testing. It’s unsustainable to expect workers to comply indefinitely with that. Morale will decline and workers will have had enough of it.

Travelers may need to weigh other options. My in-law ended up renting a car with his friends and drove the 5 ½ hour trek to Jacksonville. They made it to the game luckily given the relative proximity of their layover to final destination. Upcoming holiday venturers may not be so lucky. They will absolutely run into unprecedented disruptions due exclusively to staffing shortages and amplified by the mandates. That’s one headache I plan to avoid this season.

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Vaccine mandates won’t fly: Air travel disruptions and the outlook for airlines

American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have experienced thousands of flight cancellations of late

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