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Southwest Airlines cancelled more than 350 flights on Monday due to a major interruption over the weekend, which it blamed on severe weather and air traffic control issues.
The pilots’ union accused the company of responding poorly to what it said were small challenges to other airlines.
The cancellation and delay of flights for the third consecutive day resulted in passengers being stranded and flying from California to the East Coast.
“When you are just sitting there waiting for the next flight to be cancelled, you can’t really relax,” said Vanessa Wheeler, who was waiting for time at San Jose Airport in California. She said that Southwest Airlines cancelled her six consecutive flights within three days, and then she finally decided to book a flight to Las Vegas through Delta Air Lines. She vowed never to fly southwest again.
According to data from FlightAware’s tracking service, cancelled flights on Monday accounted for 10% of Southwest Airlines’ flight plans, at least 1,400 other flights, or approximately 40% of flight delays. Southwest Airlines shares fell 4.2%.
The widespread outage began shortly after the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, which represents 9,000 pilots, asked a federal court on Friday to block the airline’s order to require all employees to be vaccinated. The union believes that Southwest Airlines must negotiate this issue because if the pilot responds to the vaccine, it may involve sick leave or disability.
Union Chairman Casey Murray told the Associated Press: “We are not opposed to vaccination at all, but our pilots are very worried about how their medical treatment will be done if they can’t fly.” Murray said the pilot did not take sick leave due to vaccine requirements.
Instead, he blamed Southwest Airlines’ operations for the chaos of the past few days. He said Southwest Airlines has become “fragile” and “will break under the slightest amount of pressure.” He said the airline uses outdated crew scheduling technology, which can cause cascading interruptions when part of its network cancels flights.
The unions of Southwest Airlines and American Airlines also believe that when airlines persuaded pilots to take a vacation during the pandemic, the management was too slow to recover the pilots from vacation, resulting in a shortage of staff.
In the employee video, Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven said that despite the “very aggressive recruitment plan…we still haven’t achieved the staffing we want”, especially the pilots.
The shortage of personnel has resulted in fewer flights. After large-scale delays this summer, Southwest Airlines cut its autumn flight schedule, which Van der Wein said helped reduce delays in the past month. He said that Southwest Airlines has significantly reduced its scheduled flight schedules for November and December, “If we think we need to do more, we will do it.”
However, reducing flights is risky: This makes Southwest Airlines have fewer and fewer options for accommodating stranded passengers.
At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday admitted to delays in parts of Florida, but opposed Southwest Airlines’ air traffic control interpretation. The FAA said on Sunday that “some airlines” are experiencing problems because the planes and crew are not at their locations. Southwest Airlines is the only airline to report such a large percentage of weekend flight cancellations and delays.
Southwest Airlines spokesperson Brandy King said that there is no evidence that the interruption was caused by any form of employee protests against vaccination.
Some passengers are not only frustrated by flight delays, but also frustrated by the lack of clear reasons.
Brian Gesch of Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, crossed the Reagan Washington National Airport with his wife. He said: “My concern is that we don’t have a real explanation. I think this is very reasonable or Trustworthy.” He suspects that the weather and air traffic controllers are the real problems. “So we were frustrated and missed a day’s work.”
Others are just worried about going home-anyway.
After Southwest Airlines cancelled their flights, Kent Moddelmog and his 14-year-old son eventually drove 700 miles (1,127 kilometers) from Phoenix to Dublin, California, because he couldn’t find the price in a competing airline. Flight. “I will not give up $3,000 to get it back,” Moddelmog said.
The sales director of a consulting company said that he flies to the southwest dozens of times a year, but “has never encountered such a situation.”
Savanthi Syth, an airline analyst at Raymond James, said the weekend’s problems will increase Southwest Airlines’ costs and worsen the company’s tensions with the union.
Southwest has Struggling with a lot of delays all summer And cancel the flight. In August, it announced that it would reduce its September flight schedule by 27 flights a day, or less than 1%, from early October to November 5, and 162 flights a day, or 4.5% of the flight schedule.
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The White House has urged airlines to adopt vaccine regulations because they are federal contractors-they get paid from the Department of Defense to operate flights, including flights to transport Afghan refugees to the United States this summer.
United Airlines is the first major airline in the United States to announce vaccination requirements. Even after President Joe Biden announced his orders for federal contractors and large employers, Southwest Airlines remained silent.
Finally, last week, Southwest Airlines told employees that they must be fully vaccinated before December 8 to keep their jobs. Workers can request to skip the injection for medical or religious reasons.
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