HOUSTON — Thousands of flights were canceled over the weekend as travelers continue to face unfriendly skies.
According to Flight Aware, more than 750 flights were canceled on Sunday, adding to the thousands that have been canceled since Thursday.
As of Sunday afternoon at Bush Airport, 13 flights were canceled and another 34 were delayed during the Father's Day and Juneteenth travel.
The cancelations are being blamed on several factors, including rough weather, staff shortages and infrastructure challenges.
TSA says they screened more than 2.4 million people nationwide since Friday. It's the highest checkpoint volume since the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
The travel issues come days after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg met with airline CEOs to discuss ways to improve performance and operations ahead of the July 4th travel surge.
“That is happening to a lot of people, and that is exactly why we are paying close attention here to what can be done and how to make sure that the airlines are delivering,” Buttigieg told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday.
Buttigieg said he is pushing the airlines to stress-test their summer schedules to ensure they can operate all their planned flights with the employees they have, and to add customer-service workers. That could put pressure on airlines to make additional cuts in their summer schedules.
Buttigieg said his department could take enforcement actions against airlines that fail to live up to consumer-protection standards. But first, he said, he wants to see whether there are major flight disruptions over the July Fourth holiday weekend and the rest of the summer.
Enforcement actions can results in fines, although they tend to be small. Air Canada agreed to pay a $2 million fine last year over slow refunds.