Southwest under scrutiny after wave of storm cancellations

The U.S. Division of Transportation stated it’ll look into flight cancellations by Southwest Airways which have left vacationers stranded at airports throughout the nation amid an intense winter storm that has killed dozens of individuals.

Many airways have been pressured to cancel flights as a result of climate, however Southwest was by far the chief in canceled flights. About 4,000 home U.S. flights have been cancelled Monday, in response to the monitoring web site FlightAware, and a couple of,900 of these have been Southwest’s.

Different main airways, together with American, United, Delta and JetBlue, suffered cancellations charges of between none and a couple of%. The cancellation price at Southwest Airways was 62%, in response to FlightAware.

Southwest spokesman Jay McVay stated at a press convention in Houston that cancellations snowballed as storm methods moved throughout the nation, leaving flight crews and planes misplaced

“So we’ve been chasing our tails, making an attempt to catch up and get again to regular safely, which is our primary precedence as rapidly as we might,” he stated. “And that’s precisely how we ended up the place we’re at the moment.”

Greater than 2,800 extra flights had already been canceled within the U.S. as of seven a.m. Tuesday and issues are prone to proceed not less than into Wednesday.

Passengers stood in lengthy traces making an attempt to rebook their flights. The Division of Transportation stated on Twitter that it was “involved by Southwest’s unacceptable price of cancellations and delays & reviews of lack of immediate customer support.” The tweet stated the division would look into whether or not Southwest might have performed something concerning the cancellations and whether or not the airline was complying with its customer support plan.

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan instructed The Wall Avenue Journal in an interview that the airline would function simply over a 3rd of its normal schedule to permit crews to get again to the place they wanted to be.

“We had a troublesome day at the moment. In all probability we’ll have one other robust day tomorrow as we work our approach out of this,” he stated Monday night. “That is the biggest scale occasion that I’ve ever seen.”

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