… On the other side of this, we’ll work to make things right for those we’ve let down, including our Employees.” “We’re working with Safety at the forefront to urgently address wide-scale disruption. “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,” the statement read. Southwest earlier responded in an emailed statement Monday afternoon emphasizing safety: The agent said Southwest would be providing buses to area hotels and assured that “we will have sufficient rooms for all customers who are affected by this disruption.” “We will make sure they are taken care of, that is not a question.”Īn announcement made in the airport terminal before the news conference apologized to customers, and said the next available Southwest seats are on Saturday. “If you’ve already left, take care of yourself, do what you need to do for your family, keep your receipts,” McVay relayed. He promised that all customers, even those who had already left the airport or made alternate arrangements on their own, would also be taken care of. “We will do everything that we need to do to right the challenges that we’ve had right now,” he said, including “hotels, ride assistance, vans … rental cars to try and make sure these folks get home as quickly as possible.” “With those cancellations and as a result, we end up with flight crews and airplanes that are out of place and not in the cities that they need to be in to continue to run our operations.” “As the storm continued to sweep across the country, it continued to impact many of our larger stations and so the cancellations just compiled one after another to 100 to 150 to 1,000,” Jay McVay said at a news conference at Houston’s William P. ‘Flight crews and airplanes … out of place’Ī spokesperson for Southwest blamed the recent winter storm for the cancellations. He’s reported that about 150 customers were waiting in a long line at one point to rebook, with the line snaking around the back of the ticket counter. CNNĬNN’s Carlos Suarez spoke with frustrated passengers in line at the Southwest ticket counter at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday afternoon. One passenger told CNN her family was on the phone for 10 hours with Southwest.Ĭustomers wait to rebook their Southwest Airlines flight at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday. On social media, customers are complaining loudly about long lines to speak with representatives, problems with lost bags and excessive wait times or busy signals on the airline’s customer service telephone lines. In all likelihood we’ll have another tough day tomorrow as we work our way out of this.” Jordan told The Wall Street Journal the company plans to operate just over a third of its schedule in upcoming days to give itself the ability for crews to get into the right positions.Īccording to WJS.com, Jordan added that reduced schedule could be extended. We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that.”

Jordan told employees, “Part of what we’re suffering is a lack of tools.

On Christmas night, ahead of Monday’s meltdown, Jordan told employees the airline has “a lot of issues in the operation right now.”ĬNN was provided a transcript of the message to Southwest employees by an aviation source. That’s the lion’s share of the more than 2,600 flight cancellations reported so far for Tuesday for all US airlines.

More than 2,400 of those flights were already canceled as of 10:50 p.m. At one point, the airline canceled around 300 flights in the span of a half hour Monday afternoon.Īnd it looks like the Southwest pain will spread into Tuesday.

The Dallas-based airline had canceled 71% of its flights – j2,909 total – on Monday, according to FlightAware. None of the other US carriers have canceled nearly as many flights or as much of their schedule as Southwest. To submit your questions or ideas, or to simply learn more about CareerTrend, contact us ().Last week’s winter weather travel mess is lingering like a vicious hangover into this week – and the headaches have been migraine-proportioned for Southwest Airlines, its CEO Bob Jordan, airline employees and most of all its frustrated passengers on Monday.Ī total of 4,002 flights within, into or out of the US were canceled on Monday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, while 9,259 flights were delayed.īut Southwest accounts for a whopping share of those. This article was written by the CareerTrend team, copy edited and fact checked through a multi-point auditing system, in efforts to ensure our readers only receive the best information.

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