Southwest Airlines canceled a minimum of 70% of its flights on Monday. In this file picture, vacationers wait to test in on the Southwest ticketing counter at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport final 12 months.

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Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Southwest Airlines canceled a minimum of 70% of its flights on Monday. In this file picture, vacationers wait to test in on the Southwest ticketing counter at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport final 12 months.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

A historic winter storm has tangled vacation journey and introduced dangerous conditions to an enormous chunk of the United States, however no airline has struggled extra to navigate the Christmas vacation rush than Southwest Airlines.

Southwest canceled greater than 2,870 flights by 8:25 p.m. ET Monday — a minimum of 70% of its schedule for the day, in response to flight tracker FlightAware. The disruptions add to chaos that has left individuals stranded at airports throughout the nation, a lot of them with little concept of once they can get dwelling or the place their baggage are.

The variety of canceled flights for Southwest is greater than 10 occasions greater than for Delta, which had the second-most cancelations by a U.S. airline with 265 flights referred to as off. Other airways have also ordered large-scale cancellations up to now week.

Southwest says its crew scheduling course of is partly responsible

Southwest spokesperson Chris Perry informed NPR the airline’s disruptions are a results of the winter storm’s lingering results, including that it hopes to “stabilize and improve its operation” with extra favorable climate circumstances.

Other points which have exacerbated the airline’s wrestle to accommodate the vacation rush embody issues with “connecting flight crews to their schedules,” Perry mentioned. That challenge has made it troublesome for workers to entry crew scheduling providers and get reassignments.

Kyle Potter, govt editor of Thrifty Traveler, referred to as it an extremely advanced job for an airline with a community as huge as Southwest’s to coordinate staffing and scheduling, significantly after climate delays.

But with many areas seeing clear skies on Monday, the airline would appear to have few apparent causes to cancel so many flights. Potter calls it a “full-blown meltdown.”

“This is really as bad as it gets for an airline,” Potter mentioned. “We’ve seen this again and again over the course of the last year or so, when airlines really just struggle especially after a storm, but there’s pretty clear skies across the country.”

For Southwest, the state of affairs started unraveling earlier than the Christmas weekend. To have in depth cancellations proceed on Monday, Potter mentioned, “is a clear, clear sign something has gone horribly wrong.”

Holiday vacationers see their plans upended

From Houston, Texas, and Tampa, Fla., to Cleveland, Ohio, and Denver, Colo., passengers are sharing images and video of overwhelmed baggage declare areas and lengthy strains at reservation counters. At Southwest, the customer support telephone line’s maintain occasions averaged greater than two hours, generally reaching 4 hours, in response to Colorado Public Radio.

“I’m okay with these travel situations and fly on by myself when it’s just me, but when my one-year-old has to suffer through it because of ineptitude and mismanagement, that becomes personal,” Southwest passenger Joshua Caudle, who mentioned he was uncertain once they would be capable to depart Denver, mentioned on Denver7 News. “I’m never going to do this with that company again.”

A Southwest passenger who says she was trying to fly from Missouri to Denver mentioned she missed spending Christmas along with her household after a number of delays and cancellations to flights out of the Kansas City International Airport. Despite her being grounded, her baggage was despatched to Denver with out her, she wrote on Twitter.

Airlines have been hit with renewed demand

Airlines have been struggling to bounce back after dropping tens of billions of {dollars} throughout the pandemic’s worst months. Staffing shortages have plagued airways as they attempt to accommodate Americans’ return to air journey. And Southwest has not been the one airline to falter underneath the demand.

Thousands of Delta pilots picketed at main airports this summer season, calling for greater pay and highlighting workers considerations as passengers confronted flight cancellations throughout the Fourth of July vacation rush. Last month, Delta pilots voted to authorize a strike after negotiations for a brand new contract have been paused.

“Every airline across the country, Southwest included, got really small at the start of the pandemic when travel basically fell off a cliff, and they have struggled as travel has rebounded to grow back up to 100% and they’re still not there,” Potter mentioned.