Southwest Airlines faces storm of criticism

NEW YORK

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More than 10,000 flights cancelled over the Christmas holiday, chaos at airports across America: Southwest Airlines found itself in the hot seat Tuesday as the airline behind the lion’s share of the weather-linked travel mayhem.

The Dallas-based, domestic-focused carrier, which has historically enjoyed a strong reputation with consumers, drew withering expletive-filled rebukes on social media, where labor leaders also highlighted horror stories from stranded airline employees.

At issue is Southwest’s performance in the wake of a brutal winter storm that began ahead of Christmas, wreaking havoc with holiday travel networks and causing some 50 fatalities.

But while operations had largely returned to normal at American Airlines and United Airlines by Dec. 27, Southwest canceled more than 2,500 flights, or nearly two-thirds of planned departures, according to tracking website FlightAware.

That’s on top of some 8,150 flights canceled over the prior five-day stretch, according to the website.

The debacle weighed on company shares and drew attention in Washington, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg calling it an “unacceptable situation” on CNN.

“The rate of cancelations and delays on Southwest Airlines is unacceptable and dramatically higher than other U.S. carriers,” the Department of Transportation said in a statement to AFP.

The agency said it expects the airline to compensate travelers for incurred losses as well as “do right” by their pilots, flight attendants and other staff, and threatened to take action against Southwest if it doesn’t comply.

Southwest has apologized for the debacle, describing the inconvenience to customers as “unacceptable.”

“We were fully staffed and prepared for the approaching holiday weekend when the severe weather swept across the continent,” said a company statement on Dec. 26.

“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.”