Airlines Are Thriving as People Keep Traveling

20.07.2023 - 18:27 / nytimes.com / Vasu Raja / Airlines

Summer travel is off to a roaring start, with little sign of a slowdown on the horizon. And airline executives say they are doing all they can to keep up, including contending with bad weather and congestion in the skies and on the ground.

Three of the nation’s largest carriers — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines — set records for quarterly revenue in the three months that ended in June. Profits more than doubled compared with the same period last year, and the three companies raised their projections for how much they would earn this year.

“We’re still in a world where demand is very strong,” Vasu Raja, American’s chief commercial officer, told reporters and investors on a call on Thursday.

The strong quarterly results underscore the durability of the travel industry’s recovery coming out of the pandemic. June was slightly busier than the same month in 2019, and July appears to be on track to match prepandemic traffic. The Transportation Security Administration screened nearly 2.9 million people on the Friday before the Fourth of July weekend, the most it has ever handled in a single day.

But the recent recovery has been marred by problems, including delays and cancellations around the country.

Airlines and the air traffic control system have struggled to overcome bad weather, technology problems, staffing shortfalls and other disruptions over the past two years, contributing to major meltdowns like the one that Southwest Airlines suffered over several days in late December. Delays and cancellations have often cascaded on themselves, disrupting air travel for days, leaving many people stranded far from their destinations.

Weather has been responsible for nearly 70 percent of flight delays so far this year, compared with just under 61 percent during the same period last year, according to federal data. Heavy traffic has also contributed to delays.

United struggled recently to overcome a disruption before July 4, for which it had initially blamed bad weather and an air traffic control staffing shortage affecting its hub at Newark Liberty International Airport, but other airlines in the region did not struggle nearly as much. In the week leading up to the holiday weekend, the airline canceled about 17 percent of all of its flights and delayed more than 51 percent, according to FlightAware, an aviation data provider.

Overall, about 1.8 percent of planned flights were canceled in the two months that ended on Tuesday, compared with 1.9 percent over the same period in 2019, according to FlightAware data. But many more were delayed: about 25 percent over the past two months, from about 19 percent in the same period in 2019.

Airlines say they have taken steps to prevent disruptions,