Southwest Airlines’ meltdown as New Year approaches: flight cancellations, delays and lack of customer service

The arrival of winter storm Elliott across the United States has highly affected the flight operations of Southwest Airlines. During the Christmas weekend, the airline already cancelled thousands of flights leaving passengers stranded and abandoned. The run-up to New Year will also be quite chaotic as Southwest announced that it will be operating with a “reduced scheduled“. Meanwhile, the Biden administration raised concerns about the many cancellations, delays and lack of customer service. 

Compared to other U.S. carriers, like American Airlines and Delta Airlines, Southwest cancelled more flights. The delays at the airline were also significant.

A passenger was able to record the public announcement made at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, stating that the airline was not able to reschedule passengers in the coming four days.

At Denver Airport, passengers told a 9NEWS reporter that they were stranded for days, unable to book a rental or hotel.

All yesterday evening flights out of San Diego got cancelled, passengers were being told that the airline is “frozen” and that they are not able to help stranded passengers.

The U.S. Department of Transportation also raised its concern about Southwest Airlines, in a Tweet, the department wrote: “USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service. The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”

Latest statement by Southwest Airlines on operational challenges:

With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our Customers and Employees in a significant way that is unacceptable.

And our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning.

We’re working with Safety at the forefront to urgently address wide-scale disruption by rebalancing the airline and repositioning Crews and our fleet ultimately to best serve all who plan to travel with us.

We were fully staffed and prepared for the approaching holiday weekend when the severe weather swept across the continent, where Southwest is the largest carrier in 23 of the top 25 travel markets in the U.S. These operational conditions 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.

This safety-first work is intentional, ongoing, and necessary to return to normal reliability, one that minimizes last-minute inconveniences. As we continue the work to recover our operation, we have made the decision to continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one third of our schedule for the next several days. And we’re working to reach Customers whose travel plans will change to offer specific information and available options, also available at Southwest.com/traveldisruption.

Our Employees and Crews scheduled to work this holiday season are showing up in every single way. We are beyond grateful for that. Our shared goal is to take care of every single Customer with the Hospitality and Heart for which we’re known.

On the other side of this, we’ll work to make things right for those we’ve let down, including our Employees.

With no concern higher than ultimate Safety, the People of Southwest share a goal to take care of each and every Customer. We recognize falling short and sincerely apologize.