MILWAUKEE — Southwest Airlines is leaving a bad taste in the mouths of many travelers looking to fly out for the holidays after cancelling over 2,500 flights as of Tuesday due to a workers shortage, overcrowded planes, the “tripledemic” and poor weather.
According to FlightAware, about 90 percent of the flights cancelled in the U.S. on Tuesday are from Southwest. Travelers are pointing to “poor communication” on the airlines’ end as one of main sources of their frustration.
“Now our flight has not been cancelled, it’s been rescheduled,” Kristy says. “But on the flight itinerary, it says canceled. One’s telling us it’s delayed, the other’s telling us it’s canceled. They already gave us our luggage back, canceled at the last minute, no other flights, no cars. So now we don’t know what to do.”
Kristy’s daughter Melissa says they were told that flight was “overbooked by 18 people.”
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Originally, CNN reported the reasons for the cancellation were:
- The storm that hit Chicago and Denver, two of Southwest’s largest hubs.
- Holiday and travel season chaos
- “Tripledemic”: people getting sick with Covid, the flu and RSV.
However, travelers say they were told a different story. It seems as if labor shortages are more of the concern than the weather. Travelers also say they were informed that the airline had “the wrong-sized planes.”
“We were going to Orlando,” Kiefer says. “The flight was supposed to leave at 10 this morning. The pilots were there but they have no stewardess anywhere around the airport to actually man the plane the rest of the way.”
Kiefer says they can’t even reschedule their flight until the Jan. 3.
“This is the only time of year we can take everyone into Florida, Kiefer continues. “I guess the hardest part was looking at all these families that were going to down to Disney for the first time and having to tell their kids they ain’t got no flights.”
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