Airline Operations Affected by Over Demand

The strong reactivation of the North American airlines and the great demand that these have had, has caused an "explosion of contained demand" for the airline industry, which is good news, however it has generated a series of inconveniences for the airlines, which in times of pandemic had to reduce their structures and their offer during the crisis and now have serious problems to keep up with this reactivation, such is the case of the recent airline, Spirit, which flies to this region. Spirit Airlines is the case that highlights the great problems that some airlines are experiencing. The most serious case is that of Spirit Airlines, the Fort Lauderdale based airline with a strong presence in Central America, which is undergoing a strong expansion plan and has even announced that it will establish a new hub in Miami. For the last few days it has been canceling flights in an untimely manner. Initially it is estimated that it had paralyzed no less than a third of its network and had limited itself to explaining through its Twitter account that it was due to "operational challenges", but days went by and Spirit is still not standing: last Wednesday it cancelled 47% of its flights after 60% had been cancelled on Tuesday. In total, more than 300 flights were cancelled.

Airline spokesman Erik Hofmeyer said it was all due to a combination of phenomena including system failures, weather and the aforementioned staff shortage. Through a statement to passengers, the airline apologized and concluded; "we have people working for you (customers), 24 hours a day. For our team members, we are providing additional assistance at airports when possible and providing updates as the situation evolves. It is worth mentioning that one of the problems that specialists were warning about in the short and medium term was that the industry's logistics chain might not be able to keep up with the exponentially evolving demand. In other words, airlines have cut back heavily on routes, frequencies and, above all, personnel, and it is not easy for them to recompose their supply to keep pace with demand.