Delays reported at Indianapolis Airport as travel season ramps up

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — American, Southwest, Delta and United airlines reported delayed departures out of Indianapolis International Airport Sunday.

The delays ranged from a few minutes to a couple of hours.

“I got in from Phoenix. My flight was scheduled to leave at 10 — it left at 10:45,” said Indianapolis resident Steven Lilako.

Florida resident Brandon Straub flew up to Indianapolis for 24 hours to attend an IU basketball fanfest event and was trying to get home Sunday night.

“It actually says that my flight is delayed right now, but the inbound flight is like 30 minutes away,” said Straub.

Others weren’t as lucky.

Richmond, Virginia, resident Jakob Merkel was supposed to fly into Atlanta on Southwest, but instead was rerouted to Baltimore.

“Originally, we had a 7:25 flight out to Atlanta on Southwest Airlines, but that got delayed by about 50 minutes to 8:15, so by the time we would make it to Atlanta we would miss our second flight,” said Merkel.

He will then have to make a three hour drive from Baltimore to Richmond.

American Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights across the nation last week, which trickled into delays at Indianapolis.

The carrier says it’s offering triple pay to flight attendants who can work through the busy holiday travel season. American says it will have 4,000 new hires on board by the end of the year — 600 of them are flight attendants.

American isn’t the only airline experiencing labor issues — Southwest saw a major disruption to its schedule last month due to lack of flight crews.

The issue isn’t going unnoticed by passengers:

“I’m sure it’s the same at other jobs as well. I feel like a lot of companies are going through a tough time right now,” said Lilako.

Although the Biden Administration has lifted various COVID restrictions on international travel, passengers still have to show proof of vaccination or negative test before coming back to the United States.