When we see a meaningful, properly coordinated expression of our 1st Amendment right to assemble, it’s inspiring. Such is the case of over 1,000 airline pilots who protested outside of Love Field yesterday:

Over 1,000 pilots for Southwest Airlines are protesting outside Love Field in Dallas for being overworked and understaffedpic.twitter.com/VppXZ0LYYf

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) June 21, 2022

Their uniform style expressed various messages highlighting the challenges they’re facing. Much (okay, so probably all) of this is due to the vaccine mandates that decimated their ranks, both through forced resignations for those who wouldn’t get jabbed as well as adverse reactions for those who did.

According to Andy Schlafly at WND:

Media stories fail to report on the underlying reason. The primary cause is not weather or similar routine disruptions but ripple effects caused by vaccine mandates demanded by the Biden administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Like many Americans, pilots, flight attendants and air traffic controllers are saying “no” to vaccine mandates by not showing up for work, leaving travelers deserted at airports. Neither Biden nor any Democrat has been willing to admit, four months from perhaps the biggest election of our lifetime, that their vaccine mandates were a mistake.

“A variety of factors continue to impact our operations, including challenges with air traffic control, weather, and unscheduled absences in some work groups,” was the official explanation by Delta, which canceled the most flights this past weekend. Other airlines have had numerous cancellations at other times this year.

“Unscheduled absences in some work groups” is a euphemism for disruptions caused by vaccine mandates. Public opposition to Biden’s vaccine mandates is hurting his approval rating and harming Democrats’ chances of holding onto control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.

Last year the pilots’ unions warned that vaccine mandates against them would result in travel chaos for many Americans, and it has. Yet airline executives failed to stand up against the Biden administration’s demand for universal vaccination, perhaps because the executives are heavily dependent on direct subsidies from the federal government totaling more than $50 billion last year for pandemic relief.

With their credibility at stake, the public health authorities continue to insist on mandatory vaccination for the military, for federal workers, for some schoolchildren, and for pilots and other airline employees. These mandates persist despite the fact that the fully vaccinated, boosted and masked-up Dr. Anthony Fauci recently caught COVID anyway.

Former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg threatened even more tyranny from his position as the secretary of transportation, which oversees the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He says he can order the airlines to hire more workers, as if he knew how to find and train the highly skilled and dedicated people who safely operate America’s air travel network.

Buttigieg himself saw his flight from Washington, D.C., to New York City canceled this past weekend, and he drove the mere 225 miles instead. That option is not available to most travelers who are unexpectedly stranded by a canceled flight, and the astronomical cost of gasoline discourages driving anyway.

The airline travel chaos “is happening to a lot of people, and that is exactly why we are paying close attention here to what can be done and how to make sure that the airlines are delivering,” Buttigieg pompously declared. But he fails to get at the root of the problem, and instead treats this as an opportunity to expand government control of an industry that was working just fine when President Trump left office.

Democrats and corporate media can point their fingers in whatever direction they want, but this comes down to Joe Biden and insane Covid policies that are having a massive toll on the travel industry. And they’re not alone.