JetBlue, airlines plagued by weekend flight cancellations

Hundreds of flights had been grounded throughout the nation, with JetBlue cancelling one third of its Sunday flights.

Different main airways with a smaller variety of cancellations embrace Spirit, Southwest, American, Frontier, Alaska, and Allegiant.

In whole, airways canceled greater than 3,500 U.S. flights this weekend and delayed 1000’s extra, citing climate in Florida and different points.

“Over the previous a number of days, extreme climate within the southeast and a number of air site visitors management delay packages have created vital impacts on the trade,” a JetBlue spokesperson stated in an announcement. “At this time’s cancellations will assist us reset our operation and safely transfer our crews and plane again into place. We apologize to our clients for the inconvenience and we’re working to get them on their means as rapidly as potential.”

The state of affairs is resulting in checked luggage being separated from vacationers, and the bags is piling up.

In some circumstances, persons are giving up on air journey and discovering alternate choices to get to their locations.

One group of 4 cousins was imagined to fly from Nashville to Boston, however after cancellations and quite a few delays, they opted to drive 17 hours residence.

“We had been sort of scrambling, clearly, to search out different flights and every little thing and attempting each which method to land in numerous cities or to strive completely different airways,” Amanda Gately stated. “However, I imply, all the flights had been simply unavailable or they had been like $1,500 for a technique.”

FlightAware, an internet site that tracks flights, famous main disruptions at a number of Florida airports, together with in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa and Orlando, in addition to Baltimore, New York and different airports across the nation.

The spate of cancellations arrived as air journey is rebounding from the pandemic, with robust demand for spring-break flights. Individuals on social media complained about ready on maintain or in strains for hours to get their canceled flights rescheduled and being stranded for days.

Southwest Airways additionally cited “climate and airspace congestion” Saturday in Florida, in addition to a “know-how difficulty.” It canceled about 1,000 flights over the weekend.

American stated Florida climate Saturday affected its operations, and it was recovering.

Alaska Airways appeared to be coping with a separate difficulty. The airline stated Sunday that weekend flight cancellations that started Friday have affected greater than 37,000 clients and, additional cancellations had been potential. The airline declined to say why it canceled flights, however referred in its assertion to contract negotiations with its pilots. Off-duty pilots picketed in a number of U.S. cities Friday over stalled negotiations. They’ve been and not using a new contract for 3 years.

“Alaska Airways didn’t correctly plan for elevated journey demand and take the steps crucial to make sure it attracted and retained pilots,” the pilots union stated in a Friday press launch.

(ABC Information and the Related Press contributed to this report)