Spirit Airlines cancels almost half of Thursday flights

Spirit Airlines canceled almost half of its flights on Thursday, continuing its series of flight cancellations into a fifth day.

Flight tracker FlightAware showed 381 flights canceled by Spirit Airlines before 10 a.m. on Thursday, with 48 percent of flights for the day already canceled, USA Today reported.

It is the fifth day Spirit Airlines has struggled with flight cancellations as more than 50 percent of flights were canceled Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Around 42 percent of flights were canceled Monday.

“After working through yesterday’s proactive cancellations, we’ve implemented a more thorough reboot of the network, allowing us to reassign our crews more efficiently and restore the network faster,” Spirit said on Wednesday. “As a result, cancellation numbers will progressively drop in the days to come.” 

Flights have been canceled by multiple airlines throughout the summer due to technical issues and staffing shortages as the number of travelers increased.

Americans Airlines had hundreds of cancellations the past couple of days but seemed to control the flights on Wednesday, as only 3 percent were canceled.

There were more than 2.2 million passengers screened by the Transportation Security Administration on Sunday.

The increase in travel comes after airlines had a devastating year in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The airline industry is slowly seeing a comeback as bookings have increased during the summer due to vaccinations and a drop in many coronavirus restrictions.

The Hill has reached out to Spirit Airlines for comment.