Delta has seen its cancelations increase this year and is trying to fix it before busy summer travel season

Delta Air Lines is trying to get its cancellations under control before the busy summer travel season begins, according to a new report.

The airline typically sits high among industry rankings for reliability, but Delta's domestic flight cancellations have been higher than the industry standard this year, the Wall Street Journal reports.

During the first weekend of May, Delta cancelled hundreds of flights due to weather disruptions. Those same disruptions did not force cancellations at most other domestic airlines, which continued to operate without issue, the WSJ reports. Indeed only Spirit, which shut down that weekend, cancelled more, the outlet added.

According to the report, Delta is working to lower its cancellation rate before summer, when even small delays can cause an avalanche of problems for both companies and their customers.

“Our challenges, while not systemic, highlight where we must sharpen our operational edge,” Delta Air Lines Chief Operating Officer Dan Janki said in a memo to employees earlier this month.

One step Delta is taking to help alleviate its issue is increasing the number of staff tasked with tracking the schedules of its pilots and crew.

Cancellations due to pilot availability are more than 10 times the historic levels and account for 35 percent of mainline flight cancellations, according to Ryan Gumm, the airline's senior vice president of flight operations, per the WSJ. That figure is up from 7 percent in 2024.

Staffing issues, both for pilots and for air traffic controllers, have been plaguing the domestic airline industry in recent years.

Gumm wrote in his memo that it can take Delta 12 hours to find pilots to work a single trip. He also said pilots are taking fewer flight requests, with an acceptance rate for extra flights sitting at just 2 percent — down from 37 percent a year prior.

“Our operation today is far more complex than it was 15 years ago, yet many elements of trip coverage, scheduling practices, and pilot access haven’t evolved at the same pace,” he wrote.

The union representing Delta's pilots said that its pilots are working more overtime than they ever have, and said the airline industry across the board was short on pilots.

“We think we started 2026 with somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 pilots less than we need,” Eric Criswell, chairman of the union, told the WSJ. “The root cause is definitely the staffing and overreliance on people to volunteer to do extra.”

In 2024, Delta hired 500 pilots, which is less than half of what it hired the previous year. American and United Airlines hired hundreds more.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said last month that the airline was reviewing how it schedules and routes its pilots.

Despite its recent cancellations issues, Delta is still the country's most profitable airline. It has earned $14.7 billion in profits over the past five years, which is almost double its next-closest competitor, according to the New York Times.