A flight board reveals canceled flights on the Southwest Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday.

Eugene Garcia/AP

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Eugene Garcia/AP

A flight board reveals canceled flights on the Southwest Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday.

Eugene Garcia/AP

The cliché a few “perfect storm” might hardly be a extra apt description of the scenario proper now for Southwest Airlines — a service that has been compelled to cancel greater than 60% of its flights over the busy Christmas journey season because it struggles to get again on track after a devastating blizzard that socked in a lot of the United States.

While Southwest is not the one airline to expertise delays and cancellations, it’s by far the worst-hit. More than 5,500 Southwest flights have been taken off departure boards throughout the nation within the final two days, in comparison with 311 cancellations for Delta, which had the second-most cancellations by a U.S. airline.

Analysts say Southwest’s issues are the results of a confluence of occasions — not simply the extreme climate, however workers shortages brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to staff out sick with influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Most essential is an outdated pc system for crew scheduling that turned what would have been merely a difficult storm right into a full-scale meltdown.

“In short, everything possible has gone wrong for Southwest, including some problems of their own making,” says Kyle Potter, government editor of Thrifty Traveler, a journey web site. “At this point, we can very safely say that this is no longer a weather-related disturbance. We’ve had clear skies in the United States for several days now, more or less, and Southwest is the only airline that is failing so spectacularly here.”

That failure has attracted the eye of Congress. On Tuesday, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, launched a statement saying the committee would look into “the causes of these disruptions and its impact to customers.”

For Southwest passenger Taylor McClain, 34, the saga began final Thursday, when his morning flight from Salt Lake City into Chicago Midway was canceled. He rebooked for a 3 p.m. that did not find yourself departing till 9 p.m.

McClain’s return to Utah has been much more harrowing. He was scheduled to go away Chicago late Monday. It was canceled. Now, the soonest he is been capable of reschedule is for Thursday evening.

At least he is fortunate to be along with his mother and father, however “I will burn multiple days of unplanned vacation and absorb four days worth of extra kennel fees for the dog I can’t get back to,” he says.

“It was awful. It really was,” McClain says, including that he feels dangerous for fellow Southwest passengers who face even worse predicaments.

He says he is flown Southwest for the previous decade, however he’ll wait and see how the corporate makes him complete earlier than deciding to fly with the airline once more.

“Southwest needs to be held accountable for such a colossal failure,” McClain says.

In a statement issued Monday, the airline stated the “continuing challenges” to its operations impacting its clients are “unacceptable.”

“And our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning,” Southwest stated. “We recognize falling short and sincerely apologize.”

The firm stated the extreme climate had “forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity.”

Helane Becker, an aviation analyst with Cowen, an funding financial institution and monetary providers firm, says Southwest must deliver these instruments, within the type of inside software program techniques, updated.

“It’s not only their customer-facing systems, it’s their crew scheduling and so on,” Becker says. “Southwest has always been a laggard when it comes to technology.”

Another key issue is Southwest’s closely reliance on shorter, point-to-point flights, moderately than a “hub and spoke” mannequin of lots of its largest rivals. In truthful climate, it is a system that has labored effectively for them. But in inclement climate, it may possibly trigger issues, says Kathleen Bangs, a former industrial airline pilot and spokesperson for FlightAware.

Delta’s huge hub, for instance, is Atlanta, whereas United filters lots of its flights via Chicago.

With Southwest, nevertheless, “their pilots take off in the morning from one city, then they fly to two, three, four, five, six other cities. There’s a flight crew change somewhere in there, and then it flies one or two more legs across the country and spend the night,” Bangs says.

As a end result, “when you get a weather situation like this, you have all sorts of pilots and flight attendants that can no longer get to where they need to be, because quite often flight crews are not based at the same city or they don’t live at the same city that they’re based out of,” she says. “So when there’s bad weather, everything tends to get out of position.”

As a end result, backfilling is usually a nightmare.

Capt. Mike Santoro, the vp of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association that represents the airline’s greater than 10,000 pilots, stated on CNN that the union was “tired of apologizing for Southwest. Our hearts go out to all of the passengers.”

One of these passengers, Skyler Lenz, lives along with his spouse and two younger youngsters in Denver. The household was visiting New York City, the place they had been celebrating collectively — a marriage anniversary and his daughter’s birthday.

The household flew out on the twenty first, and deliberate to fly residence on Christmas Eve. Just earlier than they departed for the airport, Lenz checked his cellphone app “to make sure everything was good.”

It wasn’t good. The flight was canceled. He was on the cellphone for hours, however could not attain an agent. So, he used an app on his cellphone to rebook — for Dec. 28. He lastly reached an agent on Monday. He requested, “Do you think this is going to be resolved by the time we fly out?”

The agent reassured him, and even moved the flight to the twenty seventh. “But that’s when everything started to get canceled,” he says — together with his Tuesday flight.

Finally, the household determined to hire a automobile and drive again to Denver — a 26-hour drive. “There’s a place about halfway through in Illinois that’s 13 hours from here and 13 hours from from Denver. So our goal is to take a quick breather at the hotel and then pick it up again so we can be there Thursday night,” Lenz says.

As badly as issues have gone for each Southwest and its clients, the corporate has owned as much as its issues, says Becker. “From a PR perspective, they’re out in front,” she says. “They’re saying they’re buying meals for people, they’re putting people up in hotel rooms. They’re doing their best to get you where you need to go. They’re reimbursing you. They’re buying tickets on other airlines.”

This time it is Southwest, however different airways have had related “operational meltdowns” prior to now, notes Bangs.

In summer season 2021, for instance, it was Spirit and American. And over Memorial Day this yr, it was Delta Air Lines.

“Unfortunately for Southwest, this holiday season has been their turn,” she says.

But business analyst Potter says the airways’ failures imply clients find yourself paying the worth. And that may proceed so long as the carriers are allowed to “keep running these razor thin margins where mass delays and cancellations [are] just a storm or a mechanics strike or an IT software issue away.”