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Daily Caller’s Vince Coglianese Says Vaccine Mandates Are Partially To Blame For ‘Travel Crunch’

[Screenshot Fox News]

Brianna Lyman News and Commentary Writer
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Daily Caller Editorial Director Vince Coglianese said Wednesday on Fox News that the government is partially to blame for the current travel crisis the U.S. is seeing.

Southwest Airlines accounted for 63% of canceled flights Tuesday morning, with the airline responsible for 2,556 canceled flights of a grand total of 2,953. The airline was also responsible for 10% of flight delays.

Following swift criticism, the airline blamed “consecutive days of extreme winter weather” for the issues. But flight blogger The Points Guy alleged the airline “seemingly botched” the operational plan after the storm ended and that the pilots and flight attendants were struggling with scheduling.

“Staffing and technology problems combined to send the carrier on a downward spiral,” he wrote. (RELATED: ‘Tread Water Indefinitely’: Here’s How United Airlines Plans To Bounce Back From Pandemic Uncertainty)

Coglianese furthered this, noting that another issue that has been impacting all airlines is the lack of pilots.

“This is an airline that received $3 billion from the American taxpayer in order to stay in business throughout the pandemic and then in the end offered pilots buyouts as more and more pilots retired creating the kind of shortages that lead to this very tight travel crunch that we are seeing now,” Coglianese said.

“The pilots themselves have been blaming mandatory COVID vaccines for the reasons that so many have decided to retire. Trouble with recruitment to get pilots in. The government is concerned those COVID vaccine mandates have created shortages in the military, which is a feeding system into the commercial airline industry. They need military pilots to become commercial pilots. That’s happening less and less frequently these days.”

Nearly all major airlines mandated the vaccine, prompting push back from pilots in 2021. Some airlines, like United Airlines, were planning to put roughly 2,000 employees on unpaid leave after they sought an exemption for the mandates, NPR reported.