Southwest Cancels Hundreds of Flights, Leaves Passengers Stranded — What to Know

Southwest cancellations proceed throughout the nation throughout per week of “operational challenges” for the airline, leaving hundreds of passengers with no plan amid one of many busiest journey durations.

Knowledge from airline monitoring web site FlightAware exhibits that over 2,500 Southwest flights have already been canceled Wednesday morning — 60% of its schedule.

On its web site, Southwest notes that passengers who’re booked touring by means of Jan. 2, 2023 can rebook for his or her similar class ticket inside 14 days of their authentic journey date. Passengers even have the chance to request a refund by means of an internet kind.

On Wednesday, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan issued an announcement apologizing to their prospects, providing an evidence for the disruption.

“After days of attempting to function as a lot of our full schedule throughout the busy vacation weekend, we reached a choice level to considerably scale back our flying to catch up,” he mentioned.

Jordan additionally famous that he is been in contact with Division of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has additionally spoken out on the problem.

“This has clearly crossed the road from what’s an uncontrollable climate scenario to one thing that’s the airline’s direct accountability,” Buttigieg mentioned Tuesday throughout an look on “NBC Nightly Information.” “They should handle their passengers and they should handle their staff.”

The airline states that the rationale for the mass delays is because of restoration from “operational challenges”, which comes from an announcement launched by the airline on Monday. “With consecutive days of utmost winter climate throughout our community behind us, persevering with challenges are impacting our prospects and staff in a major means that’s unacceptable.”

The airways additionally states that they had been ready for the busy vacation journey season, however because of the extreme climate that stretched throughout the nation they had been pressured to change a lot of their plans. 

The Division of Transportation took to Twitter to voice their issues over the mass quantity of delays and cancellations brought on by Southwest and famous that they may examine whether or not such delays had been controllable by the airline. 

Clients have been posting on social media to indicate the situations of the present airport expertise, with some movies exhibiting Southwest staff telling passengers that they gained’t be capable of fly for the subsequent 4 days on a Southwest flight.