LONDON - Thousands of stranded holiday travellers were no closer to home on Tuesday, as the aftermath of a deadly winter storm that grounded flights and throttled plans over the holiday weekend continued to play out at airline counters across the country.
Disruptions are likely to continue throughout the week at airports, where cancelled flights caused weary homebound travellers to sleep on floors and wait hours in line for customer service.
By mid-morning Eastern time on Tuesday, nearly 2,900 US flights were cancelled and more than 1,600 others delayed, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service.
Most of the cancellations – more than 2,500 of them – came from Southwest Airlines, which had already called off more than 60 per cent of its flights for the day.
Tuesday’s unfolding chaos followed similar scenes on Monday, when more than 4,000 US flights – most also operated by Southwest – were cancelled and more than 8,500 others delayed, FlightAware reported.
Southwest Airlines said in a statement on Monday that the travel disruptions are “unacceptable” and that its network is behind because of the winter storm that slammed parts of the country with heavy snow, ice and strong winds much of last week.
“Our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning,” the company said, adding that it is working to address the disruptions by “rebalancing the airline and repositioning” crews.
By late Monday and into Tuesday morning, Southwest was in damage-control mode, responding to angry and frustrated customers on Twitter. The airline repeatedly apologised for the cancellations and offered assistance through direct messages, which did not appease everyone.
“Our biggest issue at this time is getting our crews and our aircraft in the right places,” Chris Perry, a spokesperson for Southwest, said in an email. A statement on the airline’s website called the cancellations “unacceptable”.
The US Department of Transportation said in a statement on Monday that it would look into the Southwest issue.
It added that it is concerned by the airline’s “unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays” and reports of poor customer service.
Henry Harteveldt, an airline analyst, said in an email that Southwest’s structure made it “uniquely vulnerable to weather problems, especially one as geographically extensive and as intensive as this storm has been”.
“I don’t recall seeing an airline experience such a massive operational problem as we are currently seeing at Southwest,” he said.
Most airlines operate on a “hub/spoke” basis, with planes returning back to a hub airport after flying out to other cities, but Southwest planes tend to make multiple stops across the country, he said.
Hub/spoke airlines can shut down specific routes when bad weather hits, resuming operations when conditions improve, but Southwest can’t do that as easily without disrupting multiple flights, he said.
David Vernon, another airline analyst at financial firm Sanford C. Bernstein, the system enables higher use of planes during normal times but can cause cascading negative effects when things go wrong.
Making matters worse for customers: Southwest has a policy of not exchanging tickets with other airlines, so the airline could not rebook passengers on other flights, Harteveldt said. The debacle could force the airline to “buy back” frustrated customers with deeper discounts or conduct more promotions, he said.
No single region or airport bore the brunt of the cancellations. On Tuesday morning, more than 155 flights originating at Denver International Airport, or about 17 per cent of its outgoing traffic, were cancelled, and more than 115 flights, or about 38 per cent, were cancelled out of Chicago Midway International.
More than 100 flights were also cancelled at Harry Reid International in Las Vegas, and similar numbers were reported for Baltimore-Washington International, Dallas Love Field in Texas and Nashville International in Tennessee. NYTIMES
