Southwest Airways cancels 70 per cent of flights amid winter Storm Elliott

Southwest Airways has cancelled hundreds of flights within the days following Christmas.

On Monday, the airline cancelled 70 per cent of its schedule – greater than 2,800 departures.

That was adopted up by one other 2,500 cancellations on Tuesday – 62 per cent of its deliberate flights. About the identical variety of cancellations have already been made for Wednesday, in accordance with knowledge collected by FlightAware.

On Tuesday, a complete of 4,500 flights have been cancelled, with Southwest Airways accounting for 56 per cent of cancelled departures.

On Wednesday, greater than 3,500 flights have been cancelled, with Southwest making up round 70 per cent.

On 26 December, the corporate issued a press release saying that “with consecutive days of utmost winter climate throughout our community behind us, persevering with challenges are impacting our Clients and Workers in a major manner that’s unacceptable”.

“And our heartfelt apologies for this are simply starting,” the corporate added, arguing that the “operational circumstances compelled each day adjustments to our flight schedule at a quantity and magnitude that also has the instruments our groups use to get better the airline working at capability”.

Southwest stated that they may “proceed working a diminished schedule by flying roughly one-third of our schedule for the subsequent a number of days”.

The airline is working to reposition crews who’ve ended up in areas the place they’re not scheduled to be, in accordance with NBC Information.

A spokesperson for the airline advised NBC Information that it doesn’t “have figures to share” on when they may get again to its regular schedule and what number of flights had been cancelled already for the remainder of the week.

Travellers have shared pictures of movies on social media of rising piles of luggage at Denver Worldwide Airport and Chicago’s Halfway Airport.

Southwest stated that was receiving a excessive quantity of calls and messages and requested that travellers be affected person.

Federal transportation officers have stated that the variety of cancellations is unacceptable.

Ihore Konrad advised NBC Chicago that he had been caught on the airport for 2 days amid the chaos.

“I’m indignant as hell, as a result of I see mismanagement,” he stated.

Bob Jordan, the CEO of Southwest, advised The Wall Road Journal on Monday: “We had a troublesome day as we speak. In all probability, we’ll have one other robust day tomorrow as we work our manner out of this.”

“That is the largest-scale occasion that I’ve ever seen,” he added.

A spokesperson for the Division of Transportation stated in a press release that the division “is worried by Southwest Airways’ disproportionate and unacceptable fee of cancellations and delays in addition to the failure to correctly help clients experiencing a cancellation or delay”.

“As extra data turns into out there the Division will intently study whether or not cancellations had been controllable and whether or not Southwest is complying with its customer support plan in addition to all different pertinent DOT guidelines,” they added.