Southwest Airlines cancels hundreds more flights as it tries to recover from weekend woes
Southwest Airlines has canceled 348 flights Monday as it tries to put its national flight network back together after more than 2,000 cancellations over the weekend.
The cancellations total about 10% of all schedule flights Monday for Dallasbased Southwest Airlines, spread across its biggest airports such as Denver International, BaltimoreWashington International, Dallas Love Field, Chicago Midway and other smaller destinations as well, according to Flightaware.com.
Cancellations including 35 flights at Dallas Love Field, the headquarters airport for Southwest Airlines.
The cancellations come after a meltdown in Southwest operations starting Friday starting with bad weather in Florida and cascading into 800 cancellations on Saturday and more than 1,000 on Sunday.
It came during Southwest’s busiest planned weekend of flying since the pandemic began, with more than 3,600 flights on Sunday. Southwest had 3,492 flights scheduled for Monday, according to Diio by Cirium.
“With fewer frequencies between cities in our current schedule, recovering during operational challenges is more difficult and prolonged,” Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins said in a statement Sunday.
In a memo to employees Sunday, Southwest Airlines executive vice president of daily operation Alan Kasher said some crew members were left without hotel rooms over the weekend due to the problems.
“And as we’ve seen before, an unexpected number of delays ultimately leads to a staffing shortage, and at times, mandatory overtime because of the longer operating day,” Kasher said in the memo.
The union for Southwest pilots denied that the group was participating in any kind of formal or informal protest to vaccine mandates.
“There are false claims of job actions by Southwest Pilots currently gaining traction on social media and making their way into mainstream news,” Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said in a statement Sunday night. “I can say with certainty that there are no work slowdowns or sickouts either related to the recent mandatory vaccine mandate or otherwise.”
Instead, the union has said that this weekend’s disruptions mirror other periods of high cancellations and delays that have hit the airline going back to May as the carrier tried to ramp up operations to meet a surge in traveler demand.