Alaska Airlines announces a 2% reduction in flights until July amid pilot shortage

Alaska Airlines announced Thursday that it’s canceling 2% of its total flights through the end of June as the company grapples with an ongoing pilot shortage.

The airline has canceled more than 110 flights, many at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, in the last three days. As of Thursday evening, an additional 15 flights are slated to be canceled Saturday. In a statement Thursday, the airline apologized for the cancellations.   

“At the beginning of this month, we let down some of our valued guests by canceling an unusual number of flights. To all of you who were impacted, we are deeply sorry,” it said. “We put you in a frustrating situation—most likely when you were looking to take a fun trip, family vacation or needed to get somewhere important to you. We must do better.”

The airline points to a nationwide pilot shortage as the reason for its recent spell of cancellations. More than 10,000 pilots left the industry during the coronavirus pandemic. The airline is taking many steps to combat the shortage, including working with its sister carrier, Horizon Air, to establish a new pilot academy in Oregon.

However, winter storms and the omicron surge resulted in the cancellation of several pilot training sessions earlier this year. This created a backlog in training sessions that the airline says it was not able to untangle in time for April.

“We typically schedule our flight crews three months in advance,” the airline said. “But due to the training delays, we had 63 fewer pilots prepared to fly in April than we planned for in January. We should have recognized this sooner and updated our schedule.”

Moving forward, the airline says it’s reducing 2% of its total flights through the end of June as a way to stymie unplanned cancellations. Changes will be reflected in the airline’s new schedule, which it will post sometime in the next week or so. Until then, reductions will show up as cancellations, the airline said.

“We will do everything we can to minimize disruptions to your plans and we will let you know in advance if your itinerary is impacted by these schedule adjustments,” the airline said. “For those who are impacted, the unique phone number in your message from us will get you to someone who can help without an extended wait.”

To put those reductions in perspective, the airline averaged about 1,300 flights per day pre-pandemic. Assuming the airline has more or less returned to pre-pandemic daily flight totals, a 2% reduction in flights will result in roughly 180 fewer flights per week until July.

By that time, the airline should have a handle on the problem. It says it plans to graduate 30 pilots this month and even more in May. The airline also says it’s working to avoid additional training session backlogs at its pilot academy.

“A dedicated team has been deployed to ensure training events are rescheduled faster and ensure we better match our schedule to the number of pilots we have available to fly,” it said. “We doubled the capacity of our pilot schoolhouse since the fall and are training more trainers.”