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After a chaotic summer of air travel in 2022, flights have been running relatively smoothly this year. But then storms in the Northeast this past week caused a series of flight cancellations. Here’s what to expect as the country heads into a projected record-high travel weekend—and how to keep your cool amidst air-travel unknowns.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

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First Snag of the Season

An airport concourse after midnight is not a happy place: The travelers—bone-tired, their anticipation curdled into boredom and despair—rest their weary heads on benches and jackets. The restaurants have turned off their lights; the newsstands have pulled down their grates; the bars have flipped up their stools for the night.

Until this week, it appeared as if many Americans would be spared such indignities this travel season. Flight cancellations were down from last summer, and Memorial Day weekend went off with few travel hitches. After a summer of pain last year, when airlines and airports buckled under demand from travelers, and chaos last winter, when weather and tech problems snowballed into a yuletide imbroglio, things were going pretty smoothly.

In June of last year, 2.7 percent of flights were canceled, whereas 1.9 percent of flights have been canceled this month so far (that number may change after cancellations today), Kathleen Bangs, a spokesperson for FlightAware, a company that tracks flights, told me. Although that difference might not sound like a lot, Bangs said, travelers feel the difference. She added that delays have gone up slightly, from 24 percent last June to 26 percent this June.

Then, last weekend, storms hit the Northeast. Cancellations and delays spiked as weather issues collided with established staffing and operational issues. “Last weekend was the first real snag of the season,” Bangs said. Airlines canceled thousands of flights this week—more than 8 percent of scheduled flights were canceled on Tuesday, according to FlightAware—ahead of what is projected to be the busiest Fourth of July travel weekend on record. “Did weather start it? Yes. Why it caused a cascade for them, we just don’t know,” Bangs added.

Various parties are pointing fingers. United, which canceled more than 3,000 flights this past week, according to FlightAware, was quick to blame the Federal Aviation Administration for some of its woes. “The FAA frankly failed us this weekend,” United’s CEO reportedly wrote in a memo to staff. In an email, United told me that it is ready for the holiday weekend and is seeing far fewer delays today than in previous days this week.

“There’s shared responsibility between Mother Nature, the airline’s own actions, and the FAA,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel-industry analyst for Atmosphere Research Group, told me. “The FAA is not the sole cause and shouldn’t be made out to be the bogeyman.” It doesn’t help matters that we are at the end of a calendar month, when pilots and flight attendants may be running up against their maximum flying hours, he added.

Indeed, the FAA is currently quite understaffed—though it has said that it did not have staffing issues along the East Coast on Monday or Tuesday of this week. The FAA told me that it hires controllers annually and is hiring 1,500 people this year, adding that it recently completed a review of the distribution of controllers. (Republic and Endeavor, a subsidiary of Delta, also saw high rates of cancellations, according to FlightAware. Republic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Delta told me that “as always, Delta and our connection partners work with our partners at the FAA to meet our shared top priority of safety, while running the most efficient operation possible for our customers.”)

The good news is that, after a few rough days, operations were recovering by yesterday. There were fewer flight cancellations that day compared with the ones leading up to it. Things may go okay for the airlines from here—“barring a computer meltdown,” Bangs said—as long as the weather cooperates. She added that even dense smoke could impact visibility and operations. That could remain an issue this summer as fires continue both in the U.S. and Canada.

Travelers cannot control acts of God—if only!—or airline-personnel issues. Indeed, what can be so frustrating about air travel is that so many factors are out of your control. But there are things travelers can do to try to avoid problems—or at least to increase the chances of having a decently comfortable time in the face of all the unknowns.

Bangs told me that if she were flying this weekend, she would try to get on the first flight of the day. “Statistically, there’s such a better chance of that flight not getting canceled,” she said. Harteveldt echoed that advice. If it’s doable for you, Bangs said, it could be worth looking into trying to change your booking to get on an earlier flight—or switching to a direct flight in order to reduce the chance of one leg of a trip messing up connecting flights. Also, download your airline’s app. It’s an easy way to make sure you have up-to-date info and can communicate with the airline in case things go awry.

Some of their other tips came down to preparation and attitude: It might be rough out there. Wake up early, pack light, and have your necessities consolidated in case you need to check a carry-on. Lines may be long at security. Give yourself time, and be flexible.

Bangs’s final tip: Be nice to flight attendants. Bangs, a former pilot, said that many flight attendants are scarred from “air rage” and difficult passenger interactions over the past few years. Though an airplane can be the site of frustration, seat kickers, and nonpotable water, it is also a place of work for people who have been through a lot. Be cool, everyone. And good luck if you’re traveling.

Related:

Air travel is a disaster right now. Here’s why. (From 2022) Air travel is going to be very bad, for a very long time.

Today’s News

The Supreme Court rejected President Joe Biden’s student-debt-relief plan, arguing that it overstepped the Education Department’s authority and required clear approval from Congress. Poor air quality is still affecting American cities, with experts warning that northern summer winds could continue to bring smoke from Canadian wildfires all season. Brazil’s electoral court voted to ban Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro from running for office for the next eight years on account of making false claims about voting-system integrity.

Dispatches

Up for Debate: Conor Friedersdorf solicits readers’ thoughts on affirmative action. The Books Briefing: Anyone looking for a guide to surviving our unstable era should look no further than the work of Eileen Chang, Maya Chung writes.

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Or check out these 11 undersung TV shows to watch this summer.

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

If you plan to play pickleball this weekend, be careful: Analysts found that pickleball injuries may cost Americans nearly $400 million this year, and picklers appear to be driving up health-care costs.

The sport has grown massively over the past few years and is projected to keep growing. Many people love the sport, and I myself have enjoyed a bit of pickle from time to time. But not everyone is a fan. The game has notably angered many tennis players, and The New York Times reported today that people have been filing lawsuits complaining about the game’s noises. “The most grating and disruptive sound in the entire athletic ecosystem right now may be the staccato pop-pop-pop emanating from America’s rapidly multiplying pickleball courts,” the reporter Andrew Keh writes.

— Lora

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

Championing an underappreciated television show can be a joy, an inside secret you’ll share with other fans who have stumbled upon the same discovery. Sure, it’s no fun to feel like you’re the only person in your friend group watching, for instance, Veronica Mars—I certainly did back in the aughts—but as more people caught up and caught on over the years, finally getting to talk about the biggest twists and the best performances felt thrilling. Pushing a show, especially one that’s been canceled or ignored by most prestige award shows, can be an uphill climb, but I find the trek worthwhile.

This list is an effort to get you started on your journey. My colleagues and I have compiled some of our favorite recent series that we wished had gotten more attention—including a biting comedy about Hollywood, a surprisingly clever drama about artificial intelligence, and an engrossing docuseries about a once-beloved reality-TV family. One of them, we hope, will be your new favorite show to introduce to others. — Shirley Li

Tiny Beautiful Things

No show has made me sob harder this year than Tiny Beautiful Things, an adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s essay collection that compiles her responses as the anonymous voice behind the advice column “Dear Sugar.” But just as the clarity of Strayed’s prose makes her work more than mere self-help writing, the thoughtful artistry of the series elevates the show beyond just a tearjerker. The half-hour dramedy follows Clare (played by Kathryn Hahn in the present, and Sarah Pidgeon in flashbacks), a writer whose grief over the loss of her mother (Merritt Wever) continues to affect her—as a parent, as a lover, and as a reluctant advice columnist. The narrative weaves some of Strayed’s own story—captured in her memoir, Wild—with fictional scenarios that would come off as overly sentimental were they not anchored by the ensemble’s fine-tuned performances. Tiny Beautiful Things folds the past into the present, and Strayed’s words into Clare’s thoughts, resulting in a moving and intimate portrait of heartbreak and healing. — S. L.

Watch it on: Hulu

Amanda Matlovich / Netflix

Glamorous

At first blush, Glamorous feels like a shiny new entrant in the well-worn category of workplace comedies where an industry veteran is paired with a plucky young ingenue. Kim Cattrall plays Madolyn Addison, a model turned beauty mogul who recruits an aspiring influencer named Marco Mejia as her assistant; there’s no shortage of outlandish hijinks, heartwarming intergenerational-learning moments, or bonding within a tight-knit crew of diverse and easily distracted colleagues. But the role of Marco is made particularly intriguing by the actor Miss Benny, whose own life—first as a beauty-loving YouTuber, and later as a young person contemplating a public transition—informs much of the character. Without giving away too much, Miss Benny imbues Marco with curiosity, verve, and heart, all of which make Glamorous a delight to watch alongside Cattrall’s vibrant and sometimes-vulnerable performance. Come for Cattrall—who is mostly missing from the second season of Max’s entirely uncanny Sex and the City reboot—and stay for the earnest queer-coming-of-age story. — Hannah Giorgis

Watch it on: Netflix

Shrinking

The first episode of Shrinking—which stars Jason Segel as Jimmy, a cognitive behavioral therapist on a self-destructive path after the death of his wife—seems to suggest a high-concept setup. Hungover at work one day, Jimmy has a revelation: What if he just told his patients the truth about their life instead of waiting for them to figure it out? Cue the hijinks. (Or, in Shrinking’s case, some jarring acts of violence.) Thankfully, though, the show dispenses quickly enough with the vague philosophical wrangling to settle into the more rewarding mode of the Bill Lawrence Workplace Sitcom. Created by Segel and Lawrence along with the latter’s Ted Lasso co-writer, Brett Goldstein, Shrinking also stars Harrison Ford and Jessica Williams as therapists at Jimmy’s office, Lukita Maxwell as his teenage daughter, and Christa Miller as his neighbor Liz. The more the show relaxes into being a quirky comedy about sweet weirdos, the better it becomes. Williams, at this point, has the kind of charisma that could power a continent, and her character’s antagonistic friendship with Liz, an empty-nester trying to channel her thwarted ambitions into offbeat hobbies, sets up one of the funniest double acts on TV in a while. — Sophie Gilbert

Watch it on: Apple TV+

Crash Course in Romance

Back in April, Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos announced that the platform would be investing $2.5 billion in South Korean content over the next four years, noting that Korean creators’ “stories are now at the heart of the global cultural zeitgeist.” One of the offerings is Crash Course in Romance, a drama featuring an all-star cast of Korean actors that follows Haeng-seon (played by Jeon Do-yeon), a former national handball player who serves as a primary guardian for her teenage niece and younger brother. The series, which aptly depicts the pressures that students face in hypercompetitive academic environments, is anchored by the unlikely connection between Haeng-seon and Chi-yeol (Jung Kyung-ho), a popular math instructor at the private tutoring company where Haeng-seon lands a gig. But the show also has plenty of schoolyard drama, judgmental helicopter parents, and—why not—a murder mystery. — H. G.

Watch it on: Netflix

Max

100 Foot Wave

Given the way it combines interviews with big-wave surfers and incredible footage of swells and churning seas, 100 Foot Wave could be considered both a visceral look at an extreme sport and an enthralling nature documentary. The show tracks the trials of these surfers, chronicling their hunt for the big one, their training process, and, of course, their eventual enjoyment—or painful endurance—of the ride itself. Competition and ocean science go hand in hand for athletes such as Garrett McNamara, whom the first season follows as he journeys to the small fishing town of Nazaré, in Portugal, to surf the titular mythical wave. Season 2 expands the field to incorporate several of his competitors, yielding a more scattered but no less enthralling show. Each episode contains at least one goose-bumps-inducing shot of a gigantic wall of water looming over a minuscule surfer; as a viewer, you can’t help but get, well, swept away. — S. L.

Watch it on: Max

Perry Mason

HBO’s short-lived reimagining of the classic legal drama was a prestige take on the procedural—which meant a first season that felt gritty, dark, and, as my colleague Sophie Gilbert wrote, “needlessly bleak.” But Perry Mason is worth the attention, both for Matthew Rhys’s performance and a second season that is an achievement in noir storytelling. Perry is an unusual character in today’s TV landscape: A private investigator at the series’s start, he has none of the gleeful showmanship of, say, Benoit Blanc. By Season 2 he’s a defense lawyer, and his deep commitment to justice, though admirable, makes him a melancholic presence among his peers. Yet the show understands that his world-weariness makes him the perfect vehicle for exploring the flaws of the institutions for which he works. Perry Mason is ultimately not a crime drama, but rather a show that, gradually and hauntingly, depicts how courtroom debates can be more dehumanizing than the crimes themselves. — S. L.

Watch it on: Max

[Read: The dark truth about Perry Mason]

Mrs. Davis

If Black Mirror is a show that uses sinister and even sadistic vibes to tell ultimately trollish stories, Mrs. Davis is the opposite: a breezy romp through civilization that’s also a remarkably sophisticated parable about faith. Betty Gilpin is sublime as Simone, a Nevada-based nun who finds herself pitted against “Mrs. Davis,” an AI whose ability to give people exactly what they want has drawn in virtually everyone on Earth. Created by Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez, the series traffics in typically strange and mesmerizing Lindelofian imagery (exploding horses, sacred falafel, rollercoasters of death) without ever sacrificing its joyful tone. Along the way, you might end up pondering the nature of artificial intelligence, isolation in a hyperconnected world, and whether pleasure trumps meaning—but you’re equally welcome to just enjoy the ride. — S. G.

Watch it on: Peacock

Apple TV+

Platonic

Would you believe there’s a second under-the-radar Apple comedy from one of the creative minds behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall—this one co-created by that movie’s director, Nicholas Stoller? Platonic, made by Stoller with Francesca Delbanco, is about the chaos that’s set off when Sylvia (Rose Byrne), a dissatisfied stay-at-home mom, reconnects with her best friend from college: Will, a genial slacker (Seth Rogen, of course) whose lifestyle is oppositional to hers in every way. Sylvia is prematurely fogeyish, with a striking array of Anthropologie cardigans; Will is stuck in late adolescence, decked out like “Bad Guy”–era Billie Eilish. Which life state, the show wonders, is worse? In some ways, Platonic mines similar territory to Friends From College, Stoller and Delbanco’s 2017 divisive Netflix comedy about arrested development, but the chemistry between Byrne and Rogen is so gratifying that Platonic is easier to enjoy. — S. G.

Watch it on: Apple TV+

The Other Two

Forget The Idol. The Other Two is the only show that sees the entertainment business for what it is: a ludicrous circus of egos fueled by pure, unrefined shamelessness. The half-hour comedy, which follows Brooke (played by Heléne Yorke) and Cary (Drew Tarver), the older siblings of a Justin Bieber–like pop star, is an audacious and often surreal satire of Hollywood’s extravagance and poisonous nature. This season has been especially relentless in its dissection of Hollywood’s moral pliability. In one episode, Cary is hired to voice a formless animated glob that Disney is marketing as the studio’s first openly gay character. In another, Brooke vows to “do good” and quits her job as a manager, then immediately breaks the vow when she realizes she’s no longer welcome at industry parties. The pair can be insufferable as they pursue fame, but in many ways, they represent how we can’t help but get sucked into the power-hungry vortex of celebrity culture in our age of infotainment and influencers. Even the show itself, which was canceled this week, was reportedly burdened by some of the very issues it mocked. — S. L.

Watch it on: Max

[Read: The Other Two is a winning portrait of a Gen-Z world]

Amazon Prime

Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets

If, like me, you’re feeling a little burned out by gaudy documentary series about blank-eyed cult leaders committing horrifying acts against their followers, then allow me to make a case for Shiny Happy People, a rigorous and sensitively told investigation into the cultural phenomenon that was the Duggars. Over four episodes, the directors Olivia Crist and Julia Willoughby Nason examine how the teachings of a fundamentalist Christian sect were sanitized and served up for mass consumption via an anodyne TLC reality show, 19 Kids and Counting. In 2015, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s oldest son, Josh, apologized after reports alleged that he had molested multiple underage girls as a teenager, and the show was canceled. But the real story, as Shiny Happy People lays out, is how the ministry that informed the family’s lifestyle appears to have enabled much more widespread cultures of patriarchal abuse in America. — S. G.

Watch it on: Prime

Somebody Somewhere

At the end of last year, my colleague Megan Garber wrote about the poignant first season of Somebody Somewhere, the standout 2022 show that introduced viewers to Sam (played by Bridget Everett, whose real life also served as inspiration for the series), a bereaved 40-something struggling to cope with the loss of her sister, Holly. Somebody Somewhere opened after Holly’s death, with Sam flailing her way through life in her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas, where she’d returned to care for her sister in her last days. In its second season, the quiet series is somehow even more charming. Not much has materially changed for Sam, but she and the small band of misfits who embraced her in the early stages of her midlife crisis remain close: Joel (Jeff Hiller)—who in Season 1 ushered Sam into his clandestine “choir practice” at a local church—is now her roommate. Somebody Somewhere remains at its best when it relishes the rare pleasure of unhurried character study: Sam and Joel’s banter feels easy and lived-in, even when they’re helping each other navigate difficult memories and present pains. The illicit cabaret nights at church may be gone, but Sam’s voice still fills the room. — H. G.

Watch it on: Max