Arun Venugopal: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Arun Venugopal from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. Now, if you scroll through recent news articles about travel, you might notice a distinct pattern, which is that a lot of headlines have the word chaos in them. For instance, 10 hacks to help you survive the 2022 travel chaos. Air travel chaos could last at least another year, air travel chaos could last, well, you get the idea.

Well, we want to see how chaotic your summer travels have been. We also wanted to get some answers as to why things have been so chaotic for travelers. We're joined by Heather Murphy, a reporter at The New York Times who covers travel. Her most recent article is titled, "Transportation department proposes new rule to ease, wait for it, air travel chaos for passengers." Hi, Heather.

Heather Murphy: Hi. Nice to be here.

Arun Venugopal: Listeners, let us know what sort of travel travails you've experienced as of late. Maybe it was a cancellation. Maybe it was that missing suitcase, that ruined vacation that reopened an old wound in your relationship and you feel the need to overshare with us. Maybe you have a question for Heather Murphy and hope she has the answer. Tweet us @BrianLehrer or call us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. All right. Heather, tell us how chaotic is the travel chaos this summer?

Heather Murphy: It's bad. It really is bad. I think anyone who's traveled or knows somebody who's traveled has heard some story that involved a canceled flight or a delayed flight or a lost piece of baggage. That is because more than one out of five flights on US-based carriers have been delayed lately and that's a lot. Nearly 3% of flights have been canceled. 3% of flights may not even sound like that much. 3%, it feels like so much more, but when you're talking about millions of people traveling every year, that is a lot. It's also significantly more than before the pandemic.

Arun Venugopal: You said 20% of flights have been delayed this year. That's 6% more than the airline's performance over the previous two years, so it's a significant bump. On high travel weekends, you wrote, airlines have canceled flights four times as often as they did in 2019. According to CNN, Friday, this just last Friday, was the worst day for cancellations since mid-June with 1,600 US flights canceled. The summer started pretty bad and it hasn't gotten much better, has it?

Heather Murphy: It depends on the carrier, actually. Overall, it hasn't gotten better. It's bad, but what we've seen a little bit of is that some of the carriers that had a terrible April and a terrible spring, they were aware, okay, we have to change something, and some airlines such as JetBlue did slash their schedules. Many of the carriers actually canceled a lot of their flights for the summer, looking ahead, because they were trying to avoid some of this, but even with that, we're seeing even in the past month, that the number of cancellations and delays is really significant.

Arun Venugopal: It's not just the US that's having problems, right? This is a global problem. You reported that 130,000 travelers were left stranded after Lufthansa canceled nearly all their flights in and out of Munich and Frankfurt, which is, as a lot of you know, a huge travel hub. What's going on there?

Heather Murphy: That was a very difficult 48 hours to be traveling to or from Germany. All flights were canceled, which is pretty astounding and that was due to a strike over pay and compensation. In terms of comparing the US to the rest of the world, the delayed flights have actually been comparable. Some of the underlying issues, some of which involve staffing and other things that the US is dealing with, other parts of the world are dealing with as well.

The delayed flights, when you look at it, it's quite similar, but the cancellations in the US have actually been more rampant. I was just looking at the latest numbers before joining you and whereas less than 2% of flights canceled overall have been canceled overall on non-US-based carriers, it's closer to 3% in the US during 2022. The average delay in the US is also worse, about 46 minutes compared to 50 minutes for carriers based in other countries. It's bad. It's bad in the US. It's bad everywhere, but really bad here.

Arun Venugopal: I saw an article that was quoting a representative for the flight attendants union, who says that they're just overstretched, which is the flight attendants. You mentioned pay as being a big issue, but are there other equally important things that workers are demanding?

Heather Murphy: Yes. When you ask people about what is going on, is this really a staffing issue and what else is contributing to this, you get a few different kinds of answers. I think everyone would agree that staff is playing some element in this, so just to back up a little bit. Early on in the pandemic, many airlines decided to offer buyouts to employees, to flight attendants, to pilots, to all kinds of employees. Many of those employees took those buyouts.

Now, we're getting back to the point when domestic travel is really nearing the point it was before the pandemic and so an explanation that sometimes some airlines offer is that they just don't have enough staff and that's part of why things have been rough, especially when you get a new variant. When you think back about Omicron, for example, just ripping through all this flight crew that were vaccinated and we were all just figuring out, "Oh, even if people are vaccinated, they can still become infected," was causing all kinds of issues.

You were asking, what are the issues in this industry, you're seeing some tensions, for example, from pilots about what they expect in terms of money and in terms of scheduling expectations. There are similar tensions among flight attendants, among people who work in customer service, among people who are baggage handlers and this is happening not just in the US, but all over the world. One interpretation of this is that people in this realm are just saying it's been really tough on them. The pandemic has been really tough on them and with inflation and other things, they deserve to be fairly compensated. They are saying that the airlines have failed to do that.

There's also, simultaneously, something you hear from people, people even in customer service, is part of what was appealing to them about some of these jobs before is there was a lot of flexibility in terms of hours. They could maybe just do this part-time, they could do it certain days of the week, but because of understaffing issues, they can't really count on that. Suddenly, whereas they could work Wednesday, Thursday, they're getting called on to work Saturday night and just that appeal of being in these jobs has been diminished in that sense.

Arun Venugopal: Let's hear from one of our callers. This is Si calling from Livingston, New Jersey. Si, what was your recent travel experience?

Si: Oh, this happened in May. We were coming back from our vacation to Jamaica and we had a layover in Orlando. When we landed, we were sitting in a coffee shop waiting and then we get a notification saying that our flights from Orlando to Newark was canceled. Of course, we rush with 100 others to the airline counter and we stood in line for three hours just to get to the counter to find out what had happened to our flight. This was on Friday. We were supposed to get home Friday night.

They had put us on a flight going from Orlando to Houston and Houston to Newark on Sunday. They did not provide any kind of accommodations, nothing. By the time it was eleven o'clock and no hotels were available. We stood in line for three hours to get a rental car and again, on Saturday, we find out that the whole app, the airline app, just disappeared from our phone. We panicked and went back to the airport and again stood in line for three hours to find out what had happened.

We ended up spending the night in the Orlando airport for a five o'clock flight to Houston with a four-hour layover in Houston and finally headed home Sunday evening. We were supposed to get home Friday evening and we got home on Sunday evening. I understand the customer service representatives at the airport. It's completely out of their control, but it was total chaos. It was not organized. People were frustrated. Everybody had missed important life events for the family and it was really, really frustrating.

The whole Orlando airport looked something like a shelter. People were sleeping in every spot they could find and it was really, really frustrating not knowing what was happening. There was a thunderstorm, but it passed. There was no thunderstorm on Saturday or Sunday, but they wouldn't tell us why they wouldn't put us on the next flight to Houston and why we had to circle the country to get back home.

Arun Venugopal: Well, thank you for your call, Si, and sorry to hear about. That's a pretty bad travel story. Heather, do airlines not, are they not obligated to cover the costs when travelers are stranded like that?

Heather Murphy: That sounds like a really frustrating experience and a really frustrating story, and unfortunately, it also sounds like a pretty typical story that we're hearing lately. In terms of what the airlines are obligated to do, if the airlines cancel your flight, if they flat out cancel your flight, they're obligated to give you a refund. If the airlines significantly change your flight for reasons that are-- then they're also supposed to give you a refund so that you would have the opportunity.

Maybe you're like frustrated by the airline with the route that you just were offered, and you'd rather just buy a new flight on a different airline or buy a new flight on whatever airline. The tricky thing there is it hasn't been properly defined what significantly changed is. This is something that is being discussed right now, and so that is within your rights if you feel it's been significantly changed, which is certainly sounds like yours was to just cancel it and get your money back and then buy a new flight.

In terms of refunds, it gets really tricky. You mentioned a thunderstorm there. When weather is involved, often airlines are not required to put you up somewhere, but as you noted, it didn't quite make sense. Weather seemed to be involved, but wasn't involved and that's often the case. This stuff often falls in this gray area where maybe weather was involved elsewhere, but not here, and so what are we owed? I think it depends on the airlines, but you're always right to ask. I think a lot of people just get frustrated though because you're exhausted. You just need to go stay somewhere. I think it is tricky and I empathize with your experience.

Arun Venugopal: Let's take another call. This is Lisa calling from Forest Hills. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi, thank you for taking my call again. My family was scheduled last month to go to a family reunion in North Carolina, and we actually did buy round trip tickets on an airline, and then because of stories that I'm hearing from your previous caller and everything in the news, we started to get really freaked out about the idea of our flight getting canceled or issues with COVID or whatever.

We canceled our flights and we got credits that we could use for a year and a half, and we just made a road trip out of it, which actually turned out to be a very fun and adventurous. We visited Thomas Jefferson's Monticello place, and it just turned out to be a very memorable, fun, even more than it would've been had we gotten the flight. Just something if you have the time it's fun to do that.

Arun Venugopal: That's a nice, happy ending there. Thank you for your call. Heather, is this something that we know is happening more often? People are just saying, "I can't take the risk. I'm just going to drive or go some other way."

Heather Murphy: Anecdotally, we do hear stories of this. I'm not sure it's widespread. I'm glad you had a nice time. That sounds like a good solution. I think certainly something to consider especially for those short trips like a three-day weekend or just going somewhere for two nights, that can be very meaningful, and I think even going away for two nights can feel like so much longer, but not when you spend all your time in the airport. I think when people are thinking about the short trips, in particular, it is altering the way that people think about it.

Arun Venugopal: Sharon from Queens, looks like you've got some rules of thumb when it comes to traveling. What are they?

Sharon: Rules of thumb is take a early flight. I took the first flight out in New York to Charleston. Can't be canceled if it's the first flight. Second one, be kind to the airline staff. I see people being so rude. Crazy rude. It's unnecessarily rude, be polite. Third of all, the carry-on craziness is out of control. I don't want to pay for a baggage. I don't want to check it, and I also built in an extra day on each end of my trip. If anything goes wrong, I know I got another day to get there, and I also have another day to get back to work.

It takes the tension off and also they need to just build bigger planes because those planes and people sitting there with no mask on. I was sitting with an older woman. I'm 70. She had a mask on, this guy didn't have a mask on. So I told him you are going to have to pay us all to go to the bathroom because you're not getting by me. He laughed, but I tried to make light of it like, "You know what? I'm taking a risk sitting next to you. You don't want to wear a mask and we are two older women, so think about it next time to put one on," but I had a pleasant experience on the plane and everybody was so kind. The airline staff appreciated that I said thank you and have a good day because they're stressed too.

Arun Venugopal: Yes, thank you so much for your call Sharon. Heather, there are some basics here, which have to do, obviously, with courtesy and kindness, the kinds of things that we shouldn't have to be taught as grownups. On the other front it sounds like people like Sharon, I think this is really common experience, which is like, okay, there's some people who are saying, "I'm just going to take a car," but then there are other people who are saying like, "Let me just factor in all this extra time." Which is crazy, isn't it? That air travel has gotten so complicated that you have to pad your vacation just in case.

Heather Murphy: Yes, I think your tips were really smart. I think actually, even just the idea of booking an early flight, I was recently talking to a lot of pilots, some former commercial pilots about their tips, and that was one that came up a lot. Just get a flight early in the day, because even if it was canceled, there's more options. I think that's actually a smart tip. You were mentioning that people are just bringing on all these bags on, and I think what's tricky is we're all getting fearful that our bags might not make it there.

Just to put it in context, I was recently looking up the statistics to try to understand what is really the chances that our bags are not going to get there. In May of 2022, which is the most recent month that the department of transportation puts out data for, about 0.6% of bags were mishandled. That actually doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a lot, it's 240,000 mishandled bags and it's quite a bit more than in the previous May, but it's still 0.6%. It's just something for us all to think about when we're deciding, can we trust checking through this bag or are we going to just try to cram three bags into one bag so that we can bring it on the flight?

Arun Venugopal: I returned from a trip to India earlier this summer for a wedding, and when I got back to New York, my suitcase is like day after day. They were like, "Yes, no, no, it's going to get to you," and at some point you start thinking, "No, this is not going to happen. I'm never going to get my stuff. I'm not going to get my Indian snacks and my [unintelligible 00:17:44] sweets," and all that stuff like that, and you just have to prepare yourself for the pain of separation with all that stuff you've brought back. That suitcase I think was lost somewhere in Amsterdam or whatever, which apparently-

Heather Murphy: Oh, no.

Arun Venugopal: -is this notorious, the Amsterdam experience. Is it something that you heard a lot about?

Heather Murphy: I've seen some photos. Yes, there's a lot of photos that have made their way out of Amsterdam. Yes. I'm so sorry. That's so frustrating, but yes, I think also getting to her point of being nice. I think that people, both passengers and the flight attendants, everyone is just so drained from the pandemic, and there's just been such an increase in bad behavior among passengers throughout the pandemic that yes, the faster we can get back to some decent normalcy in that would be great.

Arun Venugopal: I want to encourage other listeners if you have any tips of how you've sort of changed your travel habits in light of all this travel chaos. Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692, or tweet at us @BrianLehrer. One person who tweeted us is Bernie Ziprich who asked a question. Heather, hopefully, you can handle this question. What role does airline consolidation play in the terrible experience most US airlines provide?

Heather Murphy: That's a really good question. I think that with this I presume that may be referring to JetBlue's consolidation with another airline. I think that this will make JetBlue an even bigger carrier, and I think that there's some hopes that having just competition, I guess having more competition is better for prices. Overall, people would say that it's thanks to the low-cost carriers. Low-cost carriers have brought down the prices, not just among the low-cost carriers, but over the past decade.

They've helped bring down prices for all the airlines because the airlines have to compete, so the low-cost carriers existence has really helped that. In terms of the other experience, something that gets discussed a fair amount is despite all these troubles with flight cancellations and flight delays and concerns in the pandemic, it's not like there has emerged a total consistent star that promises reliability all the time.

Even despite that competition that hasn't happened. I don't know how helpful that answer is to your question, but these are some things people discuss when thinking about competition.

Arun Venugopal: I'm curious about what the government's response has been and how effective it has been, or if it promises to help ease some of these problems. I know that Transportation Commissioner, Pete Buttigieg, he's been meeting with airlines and he also, I guess, suffered the rest of us mortals. His flight from DC to New York was canceled in mid-June. One day after he told airlines he'd be monitoring them closely. Coincidence Heather, or are we talking about some tough love from the airlines against-- It sounds like a standoff because there's something really at stake here if he threatens to change how the industry practices.

Heather Murphy: Exactly. Secretary, Buttigieg, recently, I believe it was last week. It's time blend still in the pandemic. Said that what they would like to do is-- There's this existing federal requirement that I mentioned earlier, which says that if your flight is canceled, or if your flight is significantly changed then you should be eligible to get your money back. Something that has happened is that airlines have often exploited the fact that "significantly changed" has never been defined. It's never been clearly stated what exactly that means in terms of the timing.

The proposal is that it would become more explicit for domestic flights, for international flights and how long, and that other things would become explicit. Like if an additional layover is added, if other things are happened and that would theoretically help the airlines avoid just giving people vouchers and credits in those situations. I think there's a lot of people who say something like this is needed. There's other people who say something like this is still not that strong. There's not any fines.

For example, in some parts of Europe if flights are canceled or delayed in certain situations, the airline also has to give additional money to passengers. That's not currently on the table, but this would help clarify a lot. There is some enthusiasm among some passengers for this rule, but it's not going to be immediate because there's a 90-day comment period. It would only be after that 90-day comment period that the Department of Transportation will decide whether to implement this new federal rule. We're looking towards November when this might happen.

Arun Venugopal: Let's take another call. This is Hue calling from New Rochelle. Hi, Hue. What do you have to say about travel?

Hue: Well, this story's a couple years old but I think it's very relevant. We came back from Spain and lost a key bag that just had absolutely everything in it. It wasn't Delta, it was another smaller airline, but Delta was handling the baggage. I kept calling Delta. It took about two weeks and finally for the third time I heard some agents say, "Why don't you just come down to JFK and see if you can find it?" Which seems stupid. Which is why the first two times I ignored it.

I finally did it and they took me into a huge warehouse, absolutely chock full of bags. There must have been 3000 bags there. After about 10 minutes I found my bag, but I noticed that almost all the other bags had names and phone numbers, tags and nobody was going through them and calling people up and saying, "Your bag is here." I started doing that and I alerted about 25 different people who then found their bags. I think the moral of the story is if you live near JFK and you're missing a bag, or you have a relative, go on down and try to find it.

Heather Murphy: Wow.

Arun Venugopal: Thank you. I think the other moral of story have friends like you or know people like you who are going to call you when they see your bag lost in some massive warehouse at JFK. Heather, I don't know if you have any response to this. What's the takeaway you've got from this?

Heather Murphy: Somehow I don't know that this is the widespread solution to the baggage crisis, just replicate Hue, but that's very nice of you to have done that. There's nothing worse than having a lost bag when it has things that you need and you don't know where it is, so I just appreciate that you did that. Probably you said that was a couple years ago, since then there are more lost bags or more mishandled bags.

Arun Venugopal: This sounds like, is it fair to understand this is just an enormous short, again, that was a couple years ago, but we've heard about similar things happening more recently with these warehouses filled with suitcases that have not been put on connecting flights. Is this really just back to the point of a shortage of airport and airline employees?

Heather Murphy: Yes. There's many different players involved in getting us our bags from a plane. It can be partly the role of the airline, it's partly the role of that particular airport. It may involve certain baggage handlers and so there can be a lot of different players involved in that. It also can be impacted by the timing of flights. It's just some careful choreography to get us our bags when we need them. When things are going wrong in any of those areas, it can really build and then when you have problems going wrong in all of those areas it creates extra problems.

Arun Venugopal: One thing you always hear people saying is, I will never fly X-airline again, ever, but over the course of few years if you do take enough trips that's pretty much like saying, "I will never fly." I'm curious, are there airlines who are known for just transcending all this chaos and who people can rely on?

Heather Murphy: It's a great question. I think that's what we all want. Sometimes especially if you're just going away for the weekend and you have to get there on time, you can't have your flight canceled. You're maybe willing to pay 50 bucks extra, or even 100 bucks extra to know that you're not going to spend your time adjusting that flight. It's interesting a couple months ago, this was coming out of some of the data from April and JetBlue was having a really terrible time.

They'd canceled almost 10% of flights, which is so many. Delta was doing really well and it was really one of the leaders there. Then over the past few months, actually partly because JetBlue then canceled so many flights ahead of time to try to minimize their schedule. Overall, no airline had as many cancellations, so it was closer to that 3% range, but then among the airlines that were not doing as well was Delta. I think that what it just shows is that there's been so much volatility in all of this that it's hard to say, "This is always the clear loser and this is always the clear winner."

We do see certain patterns and generally the low-cost carriers tend to be later, but it's not always true. Consistently, some of the budget carriers tend to be running behind with more frequency, but it does flip flop. People get really shamed and then the airline responds. I wish I had a perfect answer from you other than just pay attention to what's going on and even then that's really tricky to do and to predict.

Arun Venugopal: I'm curious as someone who follows this issue closely, Heather, do you have your own say blackout dates, or times when you just generally avoid flying anywhere?

Heather Murphy: I think one of my conclusions is again, because I actually really like, even sometimes I think short trips can be great, but just being aware that there is that possibility and so for like a three-day trip, that maybe don't take a three-day trip. I think following the rules of buying flights earlier in the day. I think flying direct is something I try to do because it's just less opportunity for things to get altered. It helps me, but of course, sometimes we can't afford to do that sometimes that's not an option. Those are just some things that I'm thinking about as I try to book flights.

Arun Venugopal: We'll have to leave it there for today. Thanks for all your stories. My guest has been Heather Murphy, Travel Reporter for The New York Times. Heather, thanks for joining us today.

Heather Murphy: Thank you so much. It was nice talking to you.

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