Flight attendants and pilots are anxiously gearing up for a potentially record-breaking summer of travel

• The TSA predicts the number of Americans flying this summer will surpass pre-pandemic levels.
• Airlines say they're prepared to handle the onslaught. Some of their employees aren't so sure.
• "On a dime, things can change drastically," one flight attendant said. "Not just for employees, but for passengers."

Ask anybody who works in the aviation industry and they'll tell you summer is never easy.

While the rest of the country spends the summer months visiting family, heading to the beach, or jetting off to that long-awaited European tour, airline and airport workers are tasked with getting the influx of travelers to their destinations safely and on time.

"It's just a really precarious time of year for airline employees," Anthony Cataldo, a flight attendant for American Airlines with 33 years' experience, told Insider. "On a dime, things can change drastically — not just for employees, but for passengers."

It's a lesson we all learned the hard way during last year's "flightmare," when cancellations and lost baggage rates reached new highs as pent-up travel demand overwhelmed understaffed airlines. If you thought airports couldn't get any crazier, the TSA has bad news for you: Even more Americans are projected to fly this summer than before the pandemic.

Such predictions have left some airline workers anxious about carrying the industry through what could be a record-breaking travel season, four mainline pilots and flight attendants told Insider.

Some of the airline employees said they are less concerned about operational challenges like cancellations and delays (which appear to be recovering to normal rates) and more worried about bearing the brunt of overwhelming flight schedules, fearing that another chaotic summer season could push the burnt-out workforce to its limits.

Compared to last summer, airline staffing levels have largely improved, with Delta and United hiring thousands of new employees this year. The industry employed more workers in April than it's had in two decades, according to the Labor Department.

"If anything is going to really drive a lot of these performance issues, I would say it would be the morale at the company," Cataldo said. "Within the flight attendant ranks especially, it is very low."

American Airlines did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

Flight attendants and pilot unions are in the midst of contract negotiations

Labor movements across the industry have gained significant momentum since the pandemic, and the aviation industry is no exception.

Flight attendants and pilots at American Airlines, Southwest, United, Delta, Sun County, and FedEx have all engaged in labor protests over the past year, according to Cornell University's strike tracker, with demands ranging from wage hikes to more reliable scheduling and reserve systems. The Southwest and American Airlines pilot unions both voted to authorize a strike this month.

"A lot of people's views on work-life balance — not just pilots, but certainly United pilots — have changed and they wanted more schedule reliability," Garth Thompson, chair of United's pilot union, told Insider.

With several pilot and flight attendant union contracts currently in tense negotiations, passengers aren't only going to see longer security lines this summer — your trip to the airport could very well feature picket lines too.

United pilot Quincy Fleming, who is on the union's bargaining committee, said her main concern heading into this summer travel season is the amount of stress pilots are under after over four years of contract negotiations. Josh Freed, a United Airlines spokesman, said the airline is "continuing to work with the Air Line Pilots Association on the industry-leading deal" for its pilots.

"I'm just worried that it's going to be really hard," Fleming told Insider. "Not that we're going to have massive delays or anything like that, but that all the complexities and the difficulties that we have are just going to weigh on the pilot group so much."

She said that while she believes the pilot shortage will no longer be a driving issue, she worries about other industry factors outside of her control, like a nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers — the lowest in 30 years — that led to delays last year and forced the FAA to ask airlines to limit flights into the New York City area by 10% for the summer.

"We're seeing several important improvements around the aviation system - relief in how Newark and Florida airspace is managed, and we're expecting smoother operations at airports in Europe," the United spokesman said. "We're investing throughout the airline to make sure customers have smooth travel."

Air traffic control remains understaffed

As of April, the crowded airspace around New York City had 129 certified air traffic controllers — just over half of the staffing target of 226 — with 67 air traffic controllers in training, according to aviation firm Rinaldi Consultants.

Despite efforts to decrease congestion, the agency still expects overall delays in the New York region to increase by 45% this summer compared to last year. However, weather - not staffing — remains the primary cause for flight delays, an FAA spokesperson told Insider.

But staffing isn't air traffic control's only problem. Paul Rinaldi, founder of Rinaldi Consultants and former president of the national air traffic controllers association, said aging technology and infrastructure such as paper flight strips and outdated software continue to be a central problem for the agency.

The FAA is currently in the process of rolling out a new Terminal Flight Data Management program (which includes the transition to electronic flight strips), a spokesperson for the agency said.

The technological challenges facing the national airspace came to a head in January, when the US experienced its first nationwide ground stop since the 9/11 terrorist attacks due to a computer system outage.

"The FAA can't even maintain the current infrastructure," Rinaldi said. "We're on a fix on failure on just about everything out there."

Are you a flight attendant or pilot? Got a tip or story to share? Email this reporter from a non-work address at [email protected]