Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he's pushing airlines to hire more customer-service agents and take other steps to help travelers this summer
met with airline leaders to quiz them about widespread flight disruptions, his own flight was canceled and he wound up driving from Washington to New York.
Buttigieg said he is pushing the airlines to stress-test their summer schedules to ensure they can operate all theirwith the employees they have, and to add customer-service workers. That could put pressure on airlines to make additional cuts in their summer schedules. 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.
The record surely would have been broken had airlines not canceled 1,400 flights, many of them because thunderstorms hit parts of the East Coast. A day earlier, airlines scrubbed more than 1,700 flights, according to tracking service FlightAware.