- Tens of thousands of flights were delayed and canceled over the ongoing holiday weekend.
- Thursday and Friday were particularly rough for airlines, with nearly a third of scheduled flights delayed.
- Many have pegged the issues on labor shortages, while also citing bad weather and war in Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of flights within, into, or leaving the US have been delayed and canceled throughout the Juneteenth and Father's Day weekend, as travel across the nation continues to see major disruptions.
Since Thursday, at least 32,000 flights have been delayed and more than 5,000 canceled, according to the latest data from flight-tracker site FlightAware.
Travel woes subsided a bit by Monday, which has seen more than 3,000 flights delayed and some 370 canceled, FlightAware's updated data reveals.
Thursday and Friday saw the biggest spike in travel disruption, with more than 17,000 delays and over 3,100 cancellations across the two days. Nearly a third of all scheduled flights on both days experienced a delayed arrival.
Saturday and Sunday, meanwhile, combined for over 12,400 delays and nearly 1,800 cancellations — a small drop from the previous two days. Average delay time continued to drop over the weekend from a high of 81 minutes on Thursday.
Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines were the hardest-hit airlines, experiencing the most flight disruptions since Thursday, according to FlightAware, though Southwest had far fewer cancellations.
The weekend's disruptions come as many blame labor shortages and staffing issues as a common denominator, though bad weather and the economic fallout of Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine have also been cited as reasons for the headaches.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — who experienced his own travel issues this weekend — has weighed punishing airlines for the ongoing disruptions, as frustration grows across the country.
Buttigieg met recently with airline leaders to discuss travel issues, just weeks after the last holiday weekend — Memorial Day — experienced its own share of flight disruptions.
"Air travelers should be able to expect reliable service as demand returns to levels not seen since before the pandemic," Buttigieg tweeted on Friday.
According to the Transportation Security Administration, figures from airport checkpoints show that this past weekend saw some of the highest numbers of travelers so far during the calendar year — reaching as many as 2,438,784 people on Friday.