Airlines Doing Better This Holiday Season

U.S. airlines have done better this holiday season, but compared with last year, the bar wasn’t exactly high. According to a CNN report yesterday (Dec. 27), FlightAware data shows that less than 1% of flights were canceled this year during the Christmas holiday week. Of more than 162,000 flights scheduled from Dec. 20 to Dec. 26, only 1,100 did not make the cut.

In the last 10 days of 2022, by contrast, Southwest Airlines, alone, canceled 16,900 flights, stranding 2 million customers.

Still, delays (rather than cancellations) were not kind to Southwest in 2023. In the same timeframe, the airline suffered delays on 8,096 of its flights—27% of its schedule. To its credit, Southwest only canceled 2% of its flights over the Dec. 20 – 26 period.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said, “There’s a big difference between a delay and a cancellation,” adding that he considers even the rate of cancellations as “healthy.” However, he admonished, “that does invite us to pay more attention to the issue of delays and to press the airlines on how they’re behaving.”