UNITED STATES – Following a severe winter storm this week, Southwest Airlines has canceled over 60% of their flights, leaving many stranded after traveling for the holidays.
According to the flight tracking website, flightaware.com, 2,508 flights have already been canceled, and 175 flights are being delayed. Southwest has canceled more than 15,000 flights in total since December 22.
Southwest has already canceled 2,348 flights for Thursday, December 29.
While other major airlines are already starting to recover from the ongoing severe winter weather, Southwest has been falling behind dramatically. The United States Department of Transportation (DOT) has already begun an investigation into what could have caused this unacceptable event.
President Joe Biden stated via a Twitter post that his administration will hold airlines accountable.
Thousands of flights nationwide have been canceled around the holidays.
— President Biden (@POTUS) December 27, 2022
Our Administration is working to ensure airlines are held accountable.
If you’ve been affected by cancellations, go to @USDOT’s dashboard to see if you’re entitled to compensation. https://t.co/r0YBCPyKes https://t.co/1ZdqhBOAoL
Many people are already blaming Southwest’s business model. Southwest does not have interline agreements with other carriers. This allows agents to rebook stranded passengers on a different airline.
Communications between company employees have also been down, leaving many crew members also in the dark.
“I don’t know what to say. Southwest Airlines has imploded. Their antiquated software system has completely fried. Planes are parked. Crews are stranded in the airports with the passengers, volunteering to take the passengers in the parked planes but the software won’t accept it,” a Southwest First Officer stated in a Reddit post. “Phone lines are overwhelmed for both passengers and crews. I personally spent over two hours trying to get a hold of anyone in the company last night after midnight. A Captain and I did manage to get the one flight put together on Christmas night and got people home. Kudos to the ops agent and dispatcher for making it happen. We had to manually input a lot of the data and it took over an hour to coordinate with dispatch going back and forth running numbers.”
“Embarrassing is an understatement. I’m going on my second of three days off, still stuck on the east coast, and still expected to show up in the morning with no schedule. And I’m willing to fly all day if needed. Because that’s nothing compared to the passengers needing meds in bags that are lost and mothers traveling with kids, having been stuck for the same amount of days in the terminal. In 24 years, I’ve never seen anything like this. Heads need to roll! Rumors in the media are floating that there is a lack of crews and pilots are staging sick calls. Absolutely not true at all. This is a computer system meltdown. Thousands of crew members are sitting in hotels and airports with nowhere to go. This airline has failed miserably.”
“We’re optimistic to be back on track before next week,” Southwest’s CEO Bob Jordan stated in a video released by the airline.
The DOT has stated that U.S. Airlines are required to provide cash refunds to passengers whose flights were canceled and who opted not to travel.
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