CLEVELAND, Ohio — The airport has been a headache for a lot of travelers this year and flight attendants are frustrated too.
“When we had operational disruptions, flight attendants were left on hold for hours waiting for their reassignment for their either their hotel, for their rest or to even figure out which would be their next flight,” said Melinda Beal, United AFA Cleveland President.
According to Flight Aware, United has delayed over 67,000 flights and canceled over 6,700 since May 1 of this year.
Just this past week, ABC News reported that the airline canceled 18 flights after it realized 25 planes had not undergone required inspections, these are just some of the many reasons flight attendants will picket outside of Cleveland Hopkins airport Tuesday morning.
“We want the company to acknowledge that the problems do exist, which is something that's not happening presently, and work through these operational products so that we can stop having flight attendants just make it work when they don't have the tools that they need,” said Beal.
Heading into the busy holiday travel season, flight attendants hope this nationwide effort will create change.
“We would like to call out United to work on these problems before the holiday season starts so we do not find ourselves in the same situation we did this past summer,” said Beal.
United and Southwest flight attendants and members of TWU 556 will picket at 14 airports across the United States, Guam and London on Tuesday, including at Cleveland Hopkins Airport from 6 a.m. until 8 a.m. outside of door 6.
Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here.
You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We're also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here.
