More than a dozen Alaska Airlines flights were called off Wednesday morning as the cancellation run that began Friday drags on.
The airline, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport's largest carrier, had announced 17 new cancellations as of Wednesday evening, bringing the total number of flights canceled Wednesday to 37, about 4% of the airline's scheduled flights, according to FlightAware.com. Thirty-three Alaska flights scheduled for Thursday have been canceled, as have another 15 scheduled for Friday.
Staffing shortages have been largely to blame for hundreds of cancellations that have delayed or stranded tens of thousands of passengers.
While pilots are in short supply across the airline industry, Alaska has been hit harder by the pilot shortage than most of its competitors. The airline, in an increasingly bitter standoff with the union representing its pilots over a new contract, has lost dozens of pilots this year to other major carriers.
Some stranded passengers reported 10-hour wait times on Alaska's customer-service line.
In a statement Wednesday, the airline apologized to passengers inconvenienced by the cancelations and reiterated that a shortage of pilots was to blame.
"The primary driver for cancellations is the shortage of pilots available to fly versus what was planned when we built our April schedule in January," a company spokesperson said by email. "Across the industry, airlines are seeing a strain on pilot capacity as air travel demand returns, airlines are all hiring, and it takes airlines are hiring faster than we're able to hire and train new pilots."
Alaska and the union representing its pilots have been unable to reach an agreement on a new contract for three years. The dispute is currently the subject of federal mediation.
