Southwest Airlines Continues to Rebound from Massive Flight Disruptions

Southwest Airlines’ rough holiday season continues as flight delays and cancelations continued into Monday and Tuesday.

According to FlightAware.com, Southwest canceled 205 flights within, into or out of the United States yesterday, with another 1,733 flights delayed. As of 8:15 a.m. ET on Tuesday, the carrier canceled 43 flights and delayed another 207.

The ongoing issues come after the airline was forced to cancel thousands of flights every day during the 2022 winter holiday travel period. While Southwest officials blamed extreme winter weather across the country, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said “the thousands of cancellations by Southwest in recent days have not been because of the weather.”

A Southwest spokesperson told CBS News the carrier is “pleased” with its performance over the past few days, but admitted the “minimal” flight disruptions on Monday and Tuesday were caused by severe weather conditions.

To answer questions from impacted travelers and the U.S. government, the airline’s executives, CCO Ryan Green and CEO Bob Jordan, both expressed their apologies while working to provide assistance, promising to recover lost baggage, refund travelers’ canceled flights and pay for any related costs, such as lodging, transportation and food.

When asked what caused the massive delays and cancellations, Michael Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association and a captain with the airline for over 13 years, said the carrier’s outdated scheduling software could not process crew reassignments beyond about 300 changes.

“The storm was the catalyst that started this whole event, but the major problem is that our scheduling IT infrastructure is outdated and can’t handle the massive cancellations that had to happen that day when the weather event occurred,” Santoro said. “You get this snowball effect where it can’t keep track of where pilots are, flight attendants are and airplanes are.”