Southwest Airlines, FAA disagree on reason for cancellations

Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds of flights over the weekend, blaming air traffic control and weather problems.

The airline canceled a total of more than 1,000 flights, or 29% of its schedule, as of 7 p.m. ET Sunday, according to flight tracker FlightAware. That was by far the highest rate of the major US airlines. Next in line was Allegiant, who canceled 6% of its flights. American Airlines canceled 5% of its flights, while Spirit canceled 4% on Sunday, the flight tracker said. Southwest Airlines canceled more than 800 flights on Saturday.

Southwest Airlines said in an emailed statement that it was dealing with weather conditions at Florida’s airports at the start of the weekend, which were exacerbated by unexpected problems with air traffic control in the same region. Those issues caused delays and led to significant airline cancellations that began Friday night.

“We’ve been working hard all weekend to reset our operation, with a focus on repositioning aircraft and crews to take care of our customers,” Southwest Airlines said. “With fewer frequencies between cities in our current schedule, recovering during operational challenges is more difficult and lengthy.”

The company said it will allow customers to explore self-service rebooking options on Southwest.com, where they can get updates on the status of their trip.

“We experienced a significant impact on Florida airports last night after an FAA-mandated air traffic management program was implemented due to weather and resulted in a large number of cancellations,” Southwest said in a statement to FOX Television Stations on Saturday.

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The company also tweeted about the outage on Saturday afternoon.

“ATC issues and disruptive weather led to a large number of cancellations over the weekend as we work to recover our operation,” the statement read. “We appreciate your patience as we can accommodate affected customers and customer service wait times are longer than usual…”

However, Henry H. Harteveldt, president and travel industry analyst at The Atmosphere Research Group, based in San Francisco, points to other causes for the cancellations.

First, he says Southwest has more flights scheduled than it can handle, an issue that started in June. He also noted that Southwest operates what’s called a point-to-point route network, and when a delay occurs, it “cascades” along the remaining flight segments. That’s because, for example, a Southwest flight departing Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to the airline’s home base, Dallas, might make multiple stops along the way.

But Harteveldt says the most troubling reason is the likelihood that some pilots who oppose Southwest’s decision to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations are participating in an illegal workload campaign that involves calling in sick or experiencing a “work delay.”

In a statement Saturday, the airline’s pilots’ union, Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said this is not the case.

“SWAPA is aware of operational issues affecting Southwest Airlines today due to a number of issues, but we can say with confidence that our pilots do not participate in official or unofficial work actions,” it said.

According to FOX Business, a Spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration said the air traffic control problems ended on Friday.

“There have been no reported FAA air traffic staff shortages since Friday,” an FAA spokesperson said in a statement to FOX Business on Sunday. “Flight delays and cancellations occurred for a few hours Friday afternoon due to widespread severe weather, military training and limited staffing in an area of ​​the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center.”

“Some airlines are still experiencing scheduling issues as aircraft and crews are out of place. Please contact the airlines for details on current flight schedules,” the spokesperson added.

Strong to severe storms were expected in parts of Florida on Saturday evening. Flooding was also possible in some areas.

Other southern states experienced severe weather this week.

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Dozens of people had to be rescued Wednesday night in central Alabama, where the National Weather Service said as much as 13 inches of rain fell, and a southern Alabama town temporarily lost its main grocery store when a creek cut through the doors of the Piggly Wiggly. came. . Near the coast, heavy rainfall caused sewage to bubble from underground pipes.

In southern Alabama near the Florida line, water covered several streets in the flood-prone towns of Brewton and East Brewton in Escambia County, flooding a shopping center and pouring as much as 3 feet of water into the Piggly Wiggly. Two schools had to cancel classes, Escambia Sheriff Heath Jackson said.

In Georgia, as much as 15 inches of rain fell in a crescent-shaped area from Columbus to Macon and then northeast toward Athens, Gainesville and South Carolina, according to the National Weather Service.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported from Los Angeles.