A mystery no more: We found out what really caused the Fresno airport jet fuel shortage
A shortage of labor – most notably, delivery truck drivers – appears to be the underlying reason for shortages of jet fuel that disrupted some flights at Fresno Yosemite International Airport over the past week.
Chevron Corporation, which has contracts with American Airlines and United Airlines for fuel at the Fresno airport, offered the explanation in a statement provided to The Bee on Wednesday.
The Bee had inquired about the fuel concerns that prompted airlines to divert, delay or cancel more than 20 flights between June 30 and July 4.
“As the U.S. economy continues to reopen, labor shortages and other logistics constraints have intermittently impacted the industry’s ability to supply fuel in a timely manner,” the company’s statement said. “These constraints have caused jet fuel shortages for our airline customers at the Fresno airport.
“Chevron will continue to work diligently to manage these issues and reliably supply our customers at Fresno and other airports,” the statement concluded.
The coronavirus pandemic had the effect of gutting the travel industry through much of 2020, including grounding many airline flights and idling employees both for the airlines and related support industries. The rapid pace of recovery from the pandemic now includes a pent-up demand for air travel.
But because many truck drivers who had no work because of the pandemic have apparently found other jobs, there have been scattered reports of fuel shortages across the country – not only at airports, but gasoline stations where drivers fill up their cars, too.
The issues became acute last week at Fresno Yosemite International Airport, as passengers took to social media to express frustrations with delays that airline customer service representatives said were due to a lack of fuel for departing jets.
Airlines adjusted in some cases by putting extra fuel into their jets before they took off from other airports heading to Fresno. Other flights leaving Fresno were routed to intermediate airports, including Sacramento, San Jose, Bakersfield and Los Angeles to top off their fuel tanks before continuing on to what were originally scheduled as nonstop destinations.
Among the American and United routes that were affected were flights from Fresno to Dallas, Phoenix, Chicago and Denver, according to a review of airlines’ flight history on the air travel tracking site FlightAware.com.
American Airlines acknowledged the flight disruptions to The Bee on Tuesday.
“Our fuel vendor experienced a brief issue late last week, and we worked to limit impact to our customers,” Derek Walls, a corporate communications spokesperson for American Airlines, told The Bee in an email Tuesday morning. “All fuel systems are now back on track.”
Utah-based SkyWest Airlines, which operates a large number of flights at Fresno Yosemite International under contract agreements with United, American and other airlines, also noted the fuel issues in an email to The Bee on Tuesday afternoon.
“We experienced brief fuel operational issues that created some challenges with flights at Fresno Yosemite airport last week,” SkyWest’s corporate communications office said in a prepared statement. “Those issues have since been resolved.”
This story was originally published July 8, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
