Southwest flight delays drag on into a fourth day

Southwest has blamed air traffic control and weather as widespread flight cancellations and delays stretched into a fourth day, while its pilots union said the disruptions signalled how the airline’s overtaxed operations were buckling under stress. The Dallas airline cancelled 363 flights on Monday, 10% of its roster across the US, and delayed another 21 per cent. The disruptions contrasted sharply with operations at other big US carriers. American Airlines only had cancelled 1% of its flights on Monday and delayed 8 per cent, and United and Delta airlines did better. The disruptions were still an improvement from the weekend, when Southwest cancelled or delayed 59% of flights on Saturday and 62% on Sunday. American, by comparison, reported disruptions on 23% of US flights. “We could not anticipate the significant disruption that was created from unexpected [air traffic control] issues and bad weather across our Florida stations,” said Alan Kasher, Southwest’s executive vice-president of daily operations in a memo. “And as we’ve seen before, an unexpected number of delays ultimately leads to a staffing shortage.” A number of airlines — including American, Spirit, Allegiant and, in June, Southwest itself — left flyers scrambling at various points over the summer as they tried to keep up with a post-pandemic travel rebound in the early months of the peak season. Kasher said on Monday that the Dallas-based airline’s route schedule still had not fully recovered from capacity cuts made due to Covid-19, meaning “we still find ourselves with fewer frequencies between major airports to reroute delayed or cancelled customers”.<br/>