The airline trimmed its schedule after the summer to avoid further disruptions. Staffing shortages fueled hundreds of cancellations and delays at Southwest over the summer. American Airlines, which operates a large hub in Miami, in comparison, canceled 66 mainline flights, or 2% of its operation on Saturday and Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Spirit Airlines canceled 32 flights, 4% of its schedule. The Dallas-based airline canceled 1,019 flights on Sunday, 28% of its schedule, after canceling 808 flights on Saturday, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. "And Teams are working to determine the best course of action to most quickly reset our network." "Right now, our Teams are working to protect our Crew network and prevent misconnects - both for our Crews and Customers - that would cause an even greater impact," he said. Southwest's Kasher acknowledged to employees in his note Sunday that some crew members didn't have hotel rooms last night and said disruptions can quickly snowball as flight crews hit contractual and federal working limits. The airline said in a statement it expected to get close to normal operations by Sunday, but disruptions worsened. Southwest apologized to travelers for long customer service waits. Southwest's major destinations of Denver, Baltimore, Dallas Love Field and Chicago Midway were among the hardest hit by the cancellations on Sunday. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower The airline has called that unfounded and Kelly told CNBC on Tuesday that it wasn't a cause or contributing factor in the disruptions.Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit The disruptions sparked speculation on social media that employees were calling out sick in protest. Southwest last week said it would enforce the Biden administration's policy that employees of federal contractors, which includes major airlines like Southwest, American and others, must be vaccinated against Covid-19, though he told CNBC he doesn't think companies should mandate vaccines. The airline has already scaled back its fall schedule due to disruptions throughout the summer following complaints from exhausted crew. "Southwest Airlines extends a tremendous apology to our Customers and Employees for the flight cancellations and delays which occurred over the weekend and on Monday," the airline said in a statement on its website Tuesday.Ĭasey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, which represents the carrier's more than 9,000 pilots, told CNBC that the airline's poor planning was to blame for the issues. Southwest shares were up 1.3% in early afternoon trading after losing more than 4% Monday. The disruptions peaked at more than 1,100 cancellations on Sunday, about 30% of Southwest's flights that day just as the carrier scheduled the most flights in a day since April 2020, according to aviation consulting firm Cirium. Orlando flights were delayed an average of 45 minutes on Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Kelly said that each of the airports it serves in Florida was affected by air traffic control delays, "including a seven-hour ground stop at Orlando." Other airlines had relatively small numbers of cancellations compared with Southwest. Other airlines had relatively minor cancellations. The airline said bad weather and air traffic control issues in Florida kicked off the problems, which snowballed due to its own staffing shortfall, particularly a lack of backup pilots and flight attendants to step in when things go wrong. The Dallas-based airline since Saturday has canceled close to 2,400 flights, FlightAware data showed. Southwest canceled 87 flights, or 2% of its schedule on Tuesday, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit
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