
Under Southwest's contract of carriage and its customer service commitment, agents are authorized to provide hotel and transportation. If the cancellation or delay is within the airline's control, you may be entitled to a hotel room or other benefits. Wade brings challenges for women in rural Arizona Women behind a Native American basketball tournament break barriers What Arizonans need to know about new 988 suicide prevention line Want to shave taxes on your investments? These rules make it easyĪfter that, what you're entitled to depends on if your flight was canceled for reasons outside the airline's control (like weather or air traffic control) versus if they were within the airline's control (staffing, mechanical). The same domino effect happened to Spirit Airlines and American Airlines over the summer. So when a small delay happens, it can snowball. Not having a crew may not impact just one flight - it could put a plane out of position for subsequent flights as well. The pilots union has been trying to bring attention to staffing concerns all summer long, before vaccine mandates were initiated.Īnd airline crews are subject to federal rules on how long they can be on the clock. However, like many industries, airlines have struggled to bring back employees. Passenger traffic has rebounded but airline staffing still lagsĪ little background on the landscape of commercial aviation right now: As travelers gained the confidence to return to the skies, passenger traffic rebounded rapidly. So what's true? Here's what you should know about the Southwest flight cancellations. Others blamed staffing problems that have plagued the industry all summer. Facebook and Twitter posts erroneously suggested it was due to a walkout over the federal vaccine mandate and those posts caught fire, spreading across the internet. The airline initially blamed weather in Florida and air traffic control issues for causing cancellations that reverberated across the entire network.īut with clear weather radar screens and the FAA flight delay website showing no problems, conspiracy theories swirled. For the third straight day, Southwest Airlines canceled and delayed hundreds of flights nationwide as it tried to get its operation back on track.īy Monday afternoon, the flight tracking website Flight Aware showed Southwest had canceled 363 flights, or 10% of its schedule, for the day and had delayed another 1,199 more.
