Here's who to blame for airlines' cancellation chaos

A surge in Covid cases and severe winter storms created a miserable holiday travel season for hundreds of thousands of stranded airline passengers. But airlines' staffing cuts were also to blame for the 20,000 US flight that have been canceled over the last two weeks.

Airlines went into the busiest travel period of the past two years with significantly fewer employees than they had before the pandemic hit in early 2020.

That stretched staff too thin and left the airlines unable to adjust when a large number of employees tested positive for Covid and bad winter weather hit major airport hubs from Denver to Washington.

So it shouldn't have come as a surprise that travel didn't go smoothly this holiday season. In fact, it was predicted by some industry experts.