DECEMBER 29, 2022, UPDATE:
DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines expects to return to normal operations this week after slashing about two-thirds of its schedule in recent days. After canceling another 2,350 flights Thursday (Dec. 29, 2022), the company said it expects to be back to regular scheduling by Friday. Southwest is struggling to recover after being overwhelmed by a winter storm that left hundreds of pilots and flight attendants stranded out of position to operate flights. It is likely that far more than 1 million passengers have been affected. Southwest has canceled more than 13,000 flights since its meltdown began on Dec. 22, 2022.
DECEMBER 29, 2022:
DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines is still trying to extract itself from sustained scheduling chaos and cancelled another 2,350 flights after a winter storm overwhelmed its operations days ago. The Dallas carrier acknowledge inadequate and outdated operations technology that can leave flight crews out of position when adverse weather strikes. There was a total of 2,450 flights cancelled in the U.S. early Thursday (Dec. 29, 2022), 2,360 were Southwest routes, or about 58% of its entire schedule. Southwest was the only airline unable to recover from storm-related delays that began over the weekend when snow, ice and high winds raked portions of the country.
DECEMBER 28, 2022:
DALLAS (AP) — Families hoping to catch a Southwest Airlines flight after days of cancellations, missing luggage and missed family connections are suffering through another wave of scrubbed flights. Another 2,500 flights are being pulled from arrival and departure boards Wednesday (Dec. 28, 2022) and more are expected throughout the day. Exhausted travelers are seeking alternative routes with other airlines, on the ground by rental car or train, or they’ve simply given up. According to the FlightAware tracking service, more than 91% of all canceled flights in the U.S. early Wednesday were from Southwest, which has been unable to recover from ferocious winter storms that raked large swaths of the country over the weekend.
DECEMBER 27, 2022, UPDATE:
DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines scrubbed thousands of flights again in the aftermath of the massive winter storm that wrecked Christmas travel plans across the U.S., and the federal government said it would investigate why the company lagged so far behind other carriers. A day after most U.S. airlines had recovered from the storm, Southwest called off 2,500 more flights on the East Coast by midday Tuesday (Dec. 27, 2022). The FlightAware tracking service reported that those flights accounted for more than 80 percent of the 3,000 trips that got canceled nationwide Tuesday. The chaos seemed certain to continue. The airline also scrubbed 2,500 flights for Wednesday and nearly 1,000 for Thursday.
DECEMBER 27, 2022:
UNDATED (AP)- The U.S. Department of Transportation says it will look into flight cancellations by Southwest Airlines that have left travelers stranded at airports across the country amid an intense winter storm that has killed dozens of people. Many airlines were forced to cancel flights due to the weather, but Southwest was by far the most affected. About 4,000 domestic U.S. flights were cancelled Monday (Dec. 26, 2022), according to the tracking website FlightAware. About 2,900 of those were Southwest’s. A Southwest spokesman says cancellations snowballed as the storm moved from the eastern to the western U.S., leaving flight crews and planes out of place.
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