Southwest Airlines Again Plagued by Disruptions

The nightmare scenario from the summer repeated itself this weekend for Southwest Airlines.

Plagued by a perfect storm of weather, technical disruptions and staff shortages, Southwest was forced to cancel thousands of flights this past summer.

Well it happened again over the weekend.

As of this morning, Southwest has been forced to cancel more than 1,800 flights over three days, saying the problems stemmed from air traffic control issues in Florida and bad weather in the east, according to CNBC.

“We experienced significant impact in the Florida airports [Friday] evening after an FAA-imposed air traffic management program was implemented due to weather and resulted in a large number of cancellations,” Southwest’s Alan Kasher, who oversees daily flight operations, told staff in a note on Saturday.

Southwest said in a statement on Saturday it hoped “to return to close to normal operations as we move into Sunday.”

“We are working hard behind the scenes to minimize challenges and fully recover the operation as we take care of displaced Crews and Customers as quickly as possible,” the company said.

Other airlines appeared to be unaffected. While Southwest canceled 808 flights on Saturday, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware, American Airlines – which has a hub in Miami – canceled 63 flights, or two percent of its scheduled trips. Spirit, based in nearby Fort Lauderdale, canceled 32 flights or four percent of its schedule.