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Southwest Airlines scrubbed thousands of flights again on Tuesday in the aftermath of the massive winter storm that wrecked Christmas travel plans across the US, and the federal government said it would investigate why the company lagged so far behind other carriers.
A day after most US airlines had recovered from the storm, Southwest called off about 2,600 more flights on the east coast by late afternoon. Those flights accounted for more than 80% of the 3,000 trips that got canceled nationwide on Tuesday, according to tracking service FlightAware.
And the chaos seemed certain to continue. The airline also scrubbed 2,500 flights for Wednesday and nearly 1,400 for Thursday as it tried to restore order to its mangled schedule.
In a video that Southwest posted late on Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be “back on track before next week”.
Jordan blamed the winter storm for snarling the airline’s “highly complex” network. He said Southwest’s tools for recovering from disruptions work “99% of the time, but clearly we need to double down” on upgrading systems to avoid a repeat of this week.
“We have some real work to do in making this right,” said Jordan, a 34-year Southwest veteran who became CEO in February.
