The holiday travel nightmare prompted a vow from federal authorities to look into the cancellations.
LOS ANGELES, CA — A bomb cyclone plunging wide swaths of the nation into blizzard-like conditions combined with the holiday season to create a perfect storm at the nation’s airports Tuesday. Even in sunny Southern California, Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds of flights after the worst of the storm had passed.
The cancelations could last much of the week, stymying vacation plans for countless families over the winter break. Nationwide, nearly 3,000 flights were canceled Monday — more than 2,900 by Southwest Airlines alone, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. That is about 70 percent of the airline’s total flights scheduled.
As of Monday evening, based on Southwest’s website, all flights departing out of major airports in Southern California were “unavailable” through Saturday, including flights out of LAX, John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Hollywood Burbank Airport, Long Beach Airport and San Diego International Airport.
The airline issued an apology to stranded holiday travelers, stating that its operational challenges stem from last week’s historic winter storm.
Southwest spokesman Jay McVay said at a press conference in Houston that cancellations snowballed as storm systems moved across the country, leaving flight crews and planes out of place.
“So we’ve been chasing our tails, trying to catch up and get back to normal safely, which is our number one priority as quickly as we could,” he said. “And that’s exactly how we ended up where we are today.”
The travel disaster has triggered a response from the federal government with the U.S. Department of Transportation vowing to investigate Southwest’s cancellations.
“USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays and reports of lack of prompt customer service,” the department tweeted. “The department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”
Problems at Southwest Airlines appeared to snowball after the worst of the storm passed. It cancelled more than 70% of its flights Monday, more than 60% on Tuesday, and warned that it would operate just over a third of its usual schedule in the days ahead to allow crews to get back to where they needed to be.
American, United, Delta and JetBlue, suffered cancellations rates of between none and 2% by Tuesday.
The disparity prompted the U.S. Department of Transportation to call the rate of cancellations “disproportionate and unacceptable.”
Southwest Airlines said it was fully staffed late last week and prepared for the approaching Christmas weekend when severe weather swept across the continent.
“We’re working with safety at the forefront to urgently address wide-scale disruption,” airline officials stated, noting that Southwest plans to operate with a reduced schedule, flying roughly one-third of its originally scheduled flights for the next several days.
“On the other side of this, we’ll work to make things right for those we’ve let down,” the airline stated.
Impacted travelers can find more information a southwest.com/traveldisruption.
City News Service, the Associated Press and Patch staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.
Source: Encino-Tarzana Patch