Southwest Airlines apologizes as it cancels 2,700-plus flights Monday

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines apologized to customers Monday as it canceled more than 2,700 flights nationwide – more than two-thirds of its schedule – as it tries to recover from an operational meltdown stretching back to an arctic storm on Thursday. Southwest has now canceled more than 8,000 flights since Thursday and is already axing flights for Tuesday in an attempt to get planes, flight attendants and pilots into the right locations to fly. About a third of Southwest’s flights in and out of Dallas Love Field were canceled Monday, nearly 300 in all, according to Flightaware.com.

“It’s been complete and utter chaos,” said Lyn Montgomery, president of the TWU Local 556 union representing Southwest flight attendants. “This is not a staffing issue, this has nothing to do with flight attendants not being able to work, it has to do with archaic, outdated systems.” Southwest passengers Jessica Bienert and her 15-year-old son, Will, were stranded at Dallas Love Field overnight on Christmas Day before renting a car to drive back home. After arriving in Dallas for a connecting flight around 3:30 p.m., the airline consistently delayed their flight to their final destination for several hours, finally canceling it sometime after midnight. The mom and son spent a sleepless Sunday night sitting in a long line in the airport’s corridor — hopeful to rebook their flight to Albuquerque, N.M., where they had plans to ski. ”It became a disaster area, because I’d never seen an airport at 1 a.m that was still that packed,” she said. The 45-year-old mom, who frequently flies for work, said she was unable to rebook the flight on the Southwest app or website. ”Everything was down, so you could only talk to a ticketing agent, and the lines were insane,” she said. “They would have only one person at the ticketing desk.”