Who is to blame for the summer of flight delays and cancellations?

It's been called the summer of "revenge travel" — a time when Americans who stayed home for the last two years because of the pandemic splurge to book their dream vacations to make up for lost time.

But that surge in demand, coupled with an airline industry that is still understaffed, COVID-19 outbreaks among pilots, flight attendants and mechanics and severe storms, has instead created a summer of chaos travel.

Flight cancellations and delays have been surging, especially on heavy travel periods such as weekends and holidays. Since the start of June, nearly 26,000 flights, or 2.2% of all flights by U.S. carriers, have been canceled and 260,000, or 22% have been delayed, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking company.

"In my 37 years in the industry, I've never seen a summer like this," said William McGee, a former airline operations manager and consumer advocate for the nonprofit American Economic Liberties