Travel chaos, flight fees and labor shortages could worsen when airlines start buying back their own shares in October, the president of the Flight Attendants Association said.

If you’ve been thinking about getting on a plane this summer, you’ve probably heard tales of travel chaos.

Sarah Nelson, global president of the Flight Attendants Association, warned that more chaos could follow when airlines are allowed to buy back their own shares this fall.

Because the ban on so-called stock or stock buybacks ends for the industry in September. The ban was originally implemented as a prelude to a federal stimulus package that helped bail out airlines during the pandemic. Nelson warned that the end of the ban could mean increased fees, fewer services, fewer staff and “more chaos” in the operation.

Petra Sinagle, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Iowa, told Insider that in a stock buyback, “a company chooses to buy back its own shares from shareholders and takes those shares completely off the market.” This gives cash to shareholders, and reduces the number of shares outstanding. “This will at least temporarily increase, for example, the reported earnings per share, because you’re essentially dividing the same earnings number by fewer shares,” Sinagle said.

Stock buybacks have been particularly prevalent in the airline industry over the past decade. As Insider previously reported, airlines like American and Delta poured billions into stock buybacks in the years before the outbreak. For example, in In 2019, American spent $12.6 billion to pay its employees. However, from 2013 to 2019, they spent $12.9 billion on stock buybacks.

“There was a lot of pressure on the airlines to announce these huge stock buybacks when they were trying to get people to invest in the airlines,” Nelson said. But most of the profits go into stock buybacks that don’t reinvest in the company, don’t contribute to the airline’s long-term success, and don’t invest in human resources.

And when the pandemic hit, there was anger at an industry that had poured in billions of dollars in bailouts of its own. In the year In March 2020, for example, Bloomberg reported that over the past decade, the largest airlines in the country spent 96 percent of their cash flow on acquisitions.

“We originally suggested seven years or permanent, and it eventually came down to one year,” Nelson said of the ban. But it was during the COVID relief period and a year later, so that ends on September 30 this year.

Airlines, particularly Delta, have been hinting on earnings calls that they are preparing to restart acquisitions immediately, Nelson said.

“We can’t do anything about the limitations of the CARES Act at this time,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said on the company’s earnings call. “But we have long maintained that we have a responsibility to all constituencies, our customers, our employees and our owners as importantly,” he added.

Nelson said it was “incredibly irresponsible” for airlines to think of hoarding those first epidemic profits for reviews. For consumers, that could mean higher fees, less service and less staff, she said.

“It’s a labor issue, but it’s important for anyone who flies,” Nelson said. At the very least, according to Nelson, people should demand that the ban continue until the chaos is brought under control, and the years-long union negotiations are finally settled.

Congress needs to see what it’s like to have a business-oriented company, and not be pressured by investors to constantly siphon off profits for short-term gain and long-term harm. Direct damage to the company, both to the people on the front lines and to the customers trying to get service.