Southwest Airlines slashes thousands of flights in days ahead to ‘reset’ after meltdown

Passengers are still stranded, and Southwest Airlines is still scrambling. Dallas-based Southwest Airlines canceled another 2,500 flights for Wednesday after five horrific days of air travel where more than 10,700 flights were cut following icy and windy weather that crippled key hubs last week and then created a cascade of crew scheduling issues that only got worse over the next few days. After trying through Christmas to rebook passengers and reroute pilots and flight attendants lost in the confusion of technology meltdowns and interrupted flight plans, the company is canceling two-thirds of its schedule until it can get enough crew members and planes in place to restart operations. Southwest is attempting to “reset” operations, the company told staff in a message late Monday night, reducing daily flights from about 4,000 to around 1,300 nationwide.

Canceling that many flights puts further strain on the nation’s air travel system that was already dealing with heavy passenger demand during the holidays. Southwest stopped selling tickets for most of the country in the coming days to prevent customers from booking travel that will likely be canceled. “Due to our limited schedule and large number of re-accommodations, inventory available to book flights across our network is very low, but we are still operating flights,” Southwest spokesman Chris Perry said in a statement. Southwest hasn’t said how long the pain could last. It already canceled more than 1,300 flights for Thursday. Southwest has canceled more than 10,700 flights since last Thursday, and thousands more cancellations are coming in the next few days as it tries to find a way to get pilots and flight attendants in the right place. The meltdown is likely to cost Southwest Airlines hundreds of millions of dollars. A similar cancellation event caused by crew scheduling issues in October 2021 cost Southwest $75 million. That two-day event included about 2,000 cancellations.