Mass Southwest Airlines cancellations cause chaos

Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,900 flights Monday, disrupting holiday plans across the country, stranding passengers and causing chaos at some airports as much of the nation continued to suffer through the after-effects of a historic winter storm.

The airline blamed the extreme weather for the cancellations, adding in a statement “our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning. … We recognize falling short and sincerely apologize.”

Frustrated fliers, including those at Los Angeles International Airport, reported hours-long lines, lost luggage and unstaffed flights after Southwest routes were canceled or delayed — with some told not to expect a flight home for days.

The low-cost carrier had canceled nearly 70% of its scheduled flights nationwide — some 2,905 flights, far more than any other major U.S. carrier — as of Monday evening, according to the tracking site FlightAware. Among all carriers, more than 3,900 domestic and international flights were canceled, the site said.

Based on FlightAware data, LAX suffered 77 cancellations, or 9% of all its Southwest flights, and 125 delays. But it fared better than other airports across the country, including those in Sacramento, San Jose, Denver, Las Vegas and Atlanta. Sacramento saw 45% of its flights canceled, and San Jose 29%.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said Monday afternoon that it was “concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays,” as well as reports of a “lack of prompt customer service.”

“The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan,” the agency said in a tweet.

As departure screens in airports across the country lit up with delays and cancellations, travelers looked around for other ways to reach their family and friends. Some scrambled for rental cars, opting to make long drives instead of waiting it out at the airport.

What was supposed to be an hour-and-a-half flight from Sacramento to Los Angeles on Monday for Matt Grippi turned into a six-hour drive. He was rushing to make an international flight scheduled for Tuesday and didn’t trust Southwest to get him to LAX in time.

His only options were layovers as long as 26 hours costing thousands of dollars, he said.

“Every single possible flight that I could’ve taken today to get home was canceled,” Grippi said. “Communication from Southwest has been horrendous. Not sure I can ever trust them again.”

Passengers wait in Terminal 1 for delayed and canceled Southwest Airlines flights at the Hollywood Burbank Airport on Monday.

(Kirby Lee / Associated Press)

Monday’s cancellations follow days of other travel disruptions from a nearly unprecedented weather event that stretched from the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande. About 60% of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians. Nationwide, the storm was blamed for at least 50 deaths.

Travelers’ weather woes are likely to continue, with hundreds of flight cancellations already and more expected after a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — stirred up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.

In a statement Monday, Southwest Airlines pointed to “extreme winter weather” across the country and called the disruptions “unacceptable.”

The Dallas-based airline said it was “fully staffed and prepared” for the holiday weekend, but that “operational conditions” caused by the inclement weather sweeping most of the country “forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity.”

The company said it was working to re-position flight crews in order to “return to normal reliability,” but signaled that flights could continue to see changes through the New Year’s holiday.

“On the other side of this, we’ll work to make things right for those we’ve let down, including our employees,” Southwest said.

But the president of the union that represents the company’s flight attendants told the Dallas Morning News that the “complete and utter chaos” wasn’t due to a lack of staffing, but rather to Southwest’s “archaic, outdated systems.”

On Sunday, Southwest Chief Executive Bob Jordan told company employees in a message that it might take a few more days to get back on track, the Wall Street Journal reported.

As the delays and cancellations piled up, call times to the airline’s customer service lines were on average more than two hours, with some callers having to wait as long as four hours to speak with a representative, the company said.

A TikTok user’s post showed a video of a terminal at San Diego International Airport teeming with passengers waiting to speak with…