DALLAS (AP) – Southwest Airlines canceled several hundred more flights on Monday after a weekend of major disruptions due to bad weather and air traffic control issues. The company and the pilots union said the cancellations were not a response to the airline’s decision to require vaccinations.
Southwest canceled more than 360 flights – 10% of its daily schedule – on Monday, and more than 1,000 more were delayed, according to FlightAware’s tracking service.
Southwest Airlines Co. shares fell more than 4% briefly before partially rebounding; they were down 3% by the afternoon.
The third day in a row of large-scale cancellations left thousands of passengers stranded and angry.
“My concern is that we didn’t have an actual explanation that I thought was very legitimate or credible,” said Brian Gesch of Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, who was traveling through Reagan Washington National Airport with his wife. He doubted weather and air traffic controllers were the real problem. “So we are frustrated and miss a work day.”
Some were less concerned about the cause than just coming home.
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” said Sean Merrell of Frisco, Texas, “but as long as I can get back to Dallas, it’s all that matters to me.”
The widespread interference began shortly after the Southwest’s 9,000 Pilots Union on Friday asked a federal court to block the airline’s order to vaccinate all employees against COVID-19. The union said it was not against vaccination, but argued in its motion that Southwest had to negotiate before taking such a move.
Pilots are not performing outages or slowdowns to protest the vaccine mandate, according to the union, which said it “did not approve and will not condone labor measures.”
The pilots’ association provided a different explanation: The operations of Southwest had “become fragile and exposed to massive failures under the slightest pressure” because the support from the company was lacking. The union complained about the “already strained relationship” between it and the company.
Airlines persuaded thousands of workers to take vacations amid the pandemic. Unions at Southwest and American have argued that management has been too slow to bring pilots back so they are understaffed.
Alan Kasher, Southwest’s executive vice president of daily operations, said the airline was busy for the weekend but stumbled upon air traffic control issues and bad Florida weather and was unable to recover quickly. Due to cuts during the pandemic, he found that the airline is offering fewer flights to accommodate stranded passengers.
“The weekend challenges were not the result of employee demonstrations from Southwest,” said airline spokesman Chris Mainz.
The White House has urged airlines to put out vaccine mandates because they are federal contractors – they are paid by the Department of Defense to operate flights, including those that brought Afghan refugees to the US this summer.
United Airlines was the first major US airline to announce mandatory vaccination. Southwest had been silent even after President Joe Biden announced his appointment for federal contractors and large employers. Last week, Southwest finally announced to employees that they must be fully vaccinated by December 8th to keep their jobs. Workers may ask to skip the shots for medical or religious reasons.
Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration admitted delays in part of Florida on Friday but declined the Southwest air traffic control statement. The FAA said on Sunday that “some airlines” were having problems with planes and crews out of position. Southwest was the only airline to report such a high percentage of canceled and delayed flights over the weekend.
Savanthi Syth, an airline analyst for Raymond James, said the weekend problems would add to Southwest’s costs and worsen the company’s strained relations with the unions.
Southwest had a high number of delayed and canceled flights throughout the summer. In August it announced that it would cut its September flight schedule from early October to November 5 by 27 flights a day, or less than 1%, and 162 flights a day, or 4.5% of the flight schedule.
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Associated Press reporter Tracy Brown in Washington, DC contributed to this report.
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