Southwest Airlines apologized to customers Monday after canceling more than 2,700 flights nationwide — more than two-thirds of its schedule — as it tries to recover from an operational meltdown stretching back to an arctic storm on Thursday.
The Dallas-based carrier is cutting two-thirds of its flights in the coming days to try to get flight attendants and pilots back in position to reset its operations, chief operating officer Andrew Watterson wrote in a memo to employees Monday night. It’s a move that could help stabilize operations but will also reduce flying options for thousands of stranded passengers heading into another busy travel week.
Southwest canceled more than 8,000 flights since Thursday and is already axing flights for Tuesday in an attempt to get planes, flight attendants and pilots into the right locations to fly. About a third of Southwest’s flights in and out of Dallas Love Field were canceled Monday, nearly 300 in all, according to Flightaware.com.
“It’s been complete and utter chaos,” said Lyn Montgomery, president of the TWU Local 556 union representing Southwest flight attendants. “This is not a staffing issue, this has nothing to do with flight attendants not being able to work, it has to do with archaic, outdated systems.”
The delays and cancellations prompted the U.S. Department of Transportation to announce Monday night that it would investigate how Southwest is handling the situation and responding to customers.
“USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service,” the agency said in a Twitter post. “The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”
Southwest passengers Jessica Bienert and her 15-year-old son, Will, were stranded at Dallas Love Field overnight on Christmas Day before renting a car to drive back home.
After arriving in Dallas for a connecting flight around 3:30 p.m., the airline consistently delayed their flight to their final destination for several hours, finally canceling it after midnight. The mom and son spent a sleepless Sunday night sitting in a long line in the airport’s corridor — hopeful to rebook their flight to Albuquerque, N.M., where they had plans to ski.
”It became a disaster area, because I’d never seen an airport at 1 a.m. that was still that packed,” she said.
The 45-year-old mom, who frequently flies for work, said she was unable to rebook the flight on the Southwest app or website.
”Everything was down, so you could only talk to a ticketing agent, and the lines were insane,” she said. “They would have only one person at the ticketing desk.”
By the time they reached the ticket counter at 6 a.m., Biernet said she decided she wanted to return home to Little Rock. She arrived at the Budget kiosk early in the morning to rent a car and arrived back home around 2:30 p.m. Monday.
”It was just kind of a sad Christmas,” she said. “I watched old ladies cry, fall in the airport and entire families with children. I was more heartbroken about the people around me.”
So far, the airline has not reimbursed Biernet for any of her flights. The duo’s luggage still remains at Love Field.
Southwest blamed cold weather systems that swept through the country late last week and created freezing conditions in Denver and Chicago, two of the company’s biggest markets.
“With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable,” Southwest said in a statement. “And our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning.”
But while other airlines struggled with cancellations those days, including Chicago-based United and Fort Worth-based American Airlines, only a handful of carriers are still logging heavy cancellations five days later.
There were more than 3,700 flight cancellations across the U.S. Monday, according to Flightaware.com, with a vast majority of those due to Southwest Airlines. Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, which also canceled more than 7,000 flights since Thursday, began to see operations improve dramatically Monday. About 9% of Delta’s flights, 273 in total, were canceled Monday.
Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in recent months that the company needs to make large improvements to technology infrastructure to prevent large-scale cancellations, particularly those that reschedule flight attendants and pilots.
In a memo sent to employees Sunday, Watterson said Southwest’s systems are “overmatched in situations of this scale.”
“Big problems compounded by many moving variables bog down systems trying to solve them,” Watterson said in the memo. “Although we need automation to recover from something of this scale, in some functions, automation also develops issues that need troubleshooting and fixing, and that requires a manual workaround until they’re solved.”
Union leaders said any investments and small changes made so far haven’t resulted in improvements. Flight attendants have been on hold for eight to 12 hours trying to get reassigned to new flights, Montgomery said.
Thousands of flight attendants across the country have lost sleep because hotel rooms have not been booked, especially with flights being rerouted.
Meanwhile, the number of pilots and flight attendants reporting fatigue from long trips and delays is increasing, compounding problems across the country, she said.
“They are trying to stop the dominos falling,” Montgomery said. “We have another big travel holiday right around the corner with New Year’s Eve.”
Southwest Airlines Pilots Association President Casey Murray said there are hundreds of pilots across the country hoping to get on flights, but they are having trouble getting through to Southwest’s scheduling team. In some instances, pilots are showing up at airports and management is taking a roll call of who is there, Murray said.
“We’ve got them not only waiting for assignments, but scheduling doesn’t know where they are at,” Murray said.
Randy Barnes, who heads the TWU Local 555 union covering Southwest’s ground and ramp workers, said the company has been flying employees to overworked stations in Denver and Chicago.
“While everybody is rushing inside from these storms and cold weather, our people are rushing outside into these storms,” Barnes said. “But the longer we are outside, we require time to come and get warm. because no persons body can be outside in these sub-zero temperatures and single-digit temperatures for very long.”
Southwest has already canceled about 10% of its schedule on Tuesday, with more cancellations likely to come.
“This safety-first work is intentional, ongoing, and necessary to return to normal reliability, one that minimizes last-minute inconveniences,” Southwest said in a statement. “We anticipate additional changes with an already reduced level of flights as we approach the coming New Year holiday travel period. And we’re working to reach to customers whose travel plans will change with specific information and their available options.”
