good morning. it s saturday, july 2nd. i m boris sanchez. right now hundreds of flight vs been cancelled or delayed across the u.s. threatening to spoil the july 4th holiday for many people. arms are being put to the test and pushed to the brink as the number of people traveling by plane climbs to near pre-pandemic levels. staffing issue, cancellations and summer storms have caused headaches for airlines and travelers. we got to get home. we got a flight. it is going to be cancelled, they need to let us know now. it s saying my flight was last seen near new york. it s not really saying. it s not really telling me what s going on. nearly 1500 flights in the
representing major airlines say they are navigating a range of talent challenges including weather and staffing at the carrier and federal government level and making every effort to help ensure smooth travel this weekend and year round. i want to speak to captain dennis tager, commercial pilot and communications chair of the association which represents some 15,000 u.s. airline pilots. captain, thank you for taking the time this morning. thank you. pleasure to be with you. you hear the statement there, from the airlines saying range of challenges, weather, staffing, when i ve flown recently and i had a lot of delays and i m sure a lot of people had the same, staff will quietly tell me, man, this is a staffing issue, we don t have enough flight crews, we don t have enough flight attendance. is this really about a staffing shortage? well, i fly for american airlines and this week we had clear skies, and we had over 700 cancellations. one of the flights i was on was canceled. over
putin and the u.s. right now. could not be worse. reporter: you are right. sheryl griner has been critical and very candid about how she s frustrated with the u.s. government, how she doesn t feel they are doing enough to secure britney s release. she points to last weekend. there was a scheduled call where she was supposed to call her on saturday, which was their fourth wedding anniversary. that never happened. she said that britney tried calling several times but didn t go through because of a staffing issue at the embassy. she points to that as why her trust in the u.s. government is eroding and why she questions whether or not they are working hard enough. as you mentioned, she s calling for a meeting with the president. she understands that with trevor reed, his release was possible by a prison swap. she doesn t know the intricacies of it all. she says, if a prison swap is
traffic control system the majority of cancellations and the majority of delays have nothing to do with air traffic control staffing but when there is an issue, we re working that issue jacksonville is a good example. they re really a perfect storm, where you had staffing concerns, space launches, military activity affecting the air space, and weather all hitting at once. so we took a collaborative approach, got with the airlines, worked on what was changing, especially in terms of more passengers than they expected coming back, and the need to allocate air traffic resources from faa to work toward solutions. you say there s no staffing issue with air traffic control. are there other issues, though, within your purview that are slowing the system down let me be clear we have had our challenges with air traffic control, but they do not explain the majority of the cancellations and the delays that we ve seen out there. mr. secretary, when is this going to get better when can peop
normally can do, they would normally have 900 flights a day injuly and august, and they have taken that back to 825 injuly per day and 850 in august. this is one reason why easyjet haven t been able to get as many flights in the air, but to pick up many flights in the air, but to pick up on what you said about heathrow, we heard from them in the last couple of hours and they were telling their airlines yesterday, we need you to reduce your flight capacity by 10% from today because we can t handle the baggage at the moment. i don t know whether that is a staffing issue are a technical issue with conveyor belts but that issue with conveyor belts but that is what they said, 10% felt their airlines from today. the headlines on bbc news. train passengers prepare for the biggest railway strikes in 30 years, starting tomorrow. heathrow airport calls on airlines to cancel 10% of their flights today after problems with baggage at two of its terminals. it comes after easyjet announced plans to c