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The Southwest Airlines chief executive says passengers should prepare for even more cancellations Wednesday as thousands were stranded at airports over the storm-battered Christmas holiday weekend.
“We had a tough day today,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan told The Wall Street Journal.
“In all likelihood, we’re going to have another tough day as we get out of this.”
“This is the largest scale event I have ever seen,” Jordan said.
The airline, the fourth largest in the country based on passenger numbers, canceled more than 70% of its flights on Monday and more than 60% on Tuesday.
Southwest warned that it would be operating a little more than a third of its normal hours in the coming days to allow crews to get back to where they needed to be.
“Obviously, that will have an even bigger impact on our customers,” Jordan told the employees.
Thousands of Southwest passengers were stranded at airports across the country over the Christmas holiday weekend.
“But we have to get out of this. We have to get to the point where we are reliable and have our customers, our crews, our aircraft, everything in order.”
The airline appears to have been more affected by the weather than other airlines.
American, United, Delta and JetBlue all suffered cancellation rates of between zero and 2% on Tuesday.
Of the approximately 2,950 flight cancellations in the US as of noon Tuesday, 2,549 were canceled by Southwest. That represents more than 60% of its total flights for the day.
Southwest’s cancellation rate caught the attention of the Biden administration, which called the cancellation rate “disproportionate and unacceptable.”
The Department of Transportation has said it will investigate.
Southwest shares were down more than 6% as of Tuesday at 3 p.m.
Executives at the Dallas-based airline cited heavier-than-expected fog in San Diego, staff shortages at its Denver fuel supplier and outdated technology systems across its network as reasons for the outage.
Southwest said frozen planes in storm-battered Denver and Chicago, two cities where it maintains a large presence, also caused significant delays.
The airline said affected passengers could “submit receipts for consideration” by email or through the carrier’s website.
“We will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel and alternative transportation,” the airline said.