Southwest leads cancellations as air issues persist
Air travelers faced another day of heavy cancellations and flight delays Wednesday, led by Southwest Airlines cutting 450 flights and another 164 delayed.
According to flight tracking website FlightAware, more than 1,400 flights within, to and from the United States had been canceled as of midmorning, a sign that staffing shortages and weather-related issues continue to stymie airlines’ efforts to get customers to their destinations.
Wednesday’s cancellations stemmed from new winter weather that emerged late Tuesday and early Wednesday in some of the country’s most important air travel hubs. Denver International Airport had the most cancellations with 229, while Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., had 156 cancellations.
“Southwest has canceled more than 450 flights of the almost 3,000 flights scheduled for Wednesday across our network of 121 airports,” Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Alyssa Foster said. “This number includes cancellations centered on … some of our largest bases of operations and areas that are experiencing wintry weather challenges today.”
Denver, Chicago and Baltimore are three of the biggest air hubs for Southwest Airlines.
There is no indication when flight operations may stabilize. Monday, when more than 3,000 U.S. flights were canceled, was the worst day for those traveling during the holiday period. By Tuesday, the number had dropped to just over 1,500.
Even so, since Dec. 24, the travel plans of thousands of people have been disrupted by a combination of bad weather and staffing shortages. Those shortages have been attributed to a rise in coronavirus infections among airlines employees — a trend that mirrors what is happening in other business sectors. The omicron variant, which surfaced around Thanksgiving, has led to a rise in infections in the United States and around the world.
Nearly 20,000 U.S. flights have been canceled since Christmas Eve.
JetBlue trimmed more than 1,200 flights from its schedule this month in hopes of better aligning available staffing with flight offerings. The carrier is based in New York, which has been a hot spot for coronavirus infections fueled by the more virulent omicron variant.
Meanwhile, Alaska Airlines — which was forced to cancel or delay many of its flights after a Dec. 26 storm dumped 3.4 inches of snow on Seattle — has encouraged passengers to reconsider nonessential travel until after New Year’s because of limited capacity to rebook passengers stranded by the storm.
Over the past two weeks, virtually all U.S. airlines have canceled or delayed flights, leaving travelers with few options for rebooking. Some carriers, including Southwest, operated relatively normal schedules leading to the Christmas holidays, only to find themselves hit hard as the new year approached. Southwest, which had canceled 455 flights, or 15 percent of those scheduled, as of Wednesday morning, according to FlightAware, is still trying to recover from storms that hit hubs in Chicago and Baltimore over the weekend and Monday.
Weather is often a factor during the days around Christmas and New Year’s, but operations have been complicated by higher-thanexpected numbers of employees taking sick leave due to the coronavirus.
Airlines should get some help from a decreasing number of travelers. Some 1.6 million travelers passed through TSA checkpoints at U.S. airports Tuesday, about a third less than the peak just before Christmas. January and February are traditionally lighter travel months for airlines, and even more so in 2022 with business travel still down significantly from pre-pandemic levels.
Some carriers have cautioned that as infections surge in different parts of the country, staffing may remain in flux.