Southwest Airlines cancels another 5K flights over 2 days as travel misery drags on

Southwest Airlines canceled 2,500 flights Wednesday and is scheduled to cancel nearly the same amount Thursday, for a total of 5,000 over two days, piling on to the misery of passengers around the country.

As the worst of the meltdown dragged into it’s fifth day Wednesday, the Dallas-based airline’s stock was down by 5% for the second day in a row.

No other carrier posted anywhere near the amount of cancellations suffered by Southwest since the weekend.

The sheer volume of cancellations, about two-thirds of its total flights the last few days, and the continued disruption of travelers’ holiday plans led at least one airline analyst to comment that the Southwest had probably miscalculated the burden it had put on its employees.

”You have an industry running on reserve for a long time,” said Robert Mann of R.W. Mann & Co in New York. He added that the industry saw major problems over the summer and wanted to avoid the same during the holidays.

More than 2,500 flights had been canceled Wednesday and more than 250 delayed, according to flight tracker Flight Aware. That is 62% of the airline’s daily flight schedule.

Nearly 2,700 flights were canceled Tuesday and travelers on 1,000 flights experienced delays. The airline has also scrubbed more than 2,300 flights for Thursday, according to Flight Aware.

Despite 101 Southwest flights out of Love Field being canceled Wednesday morning, operations at the airport were not chaotic. Three travelers to Mexico told the Star-Telegram that their travel plans have only been delayed a few hours.

They are part of a group of 19 people who are on a mission trip with Cedar Lake Camp. They traveled from Nashville to Dallas and hope to make it to El Paso today before renting a car to drive across the border.

Other airlines, also impacted by the winter storm, are well on their way to resuming normal operations.

According to Associated Press reporting, American, United, Delta and JetBlue canceled between zero and 2% of their flights as of Tuesday.

In a press release Monday, Southwest officials said the airline would operate roughly a third of their flights for the next several days.

An official confirmed to the Star-Telegram that travelers whose flights were canceled may request a full refund from the airline or a flight credit which won’t expire.

Even though officials initially blamed the cancellations on challenges from last week’s winter storm, an internal company memo, dated Dec. 21 and obtained by the Washington Post, indicated a worker shortage in Denver was already pending.

In the memo, Southwest’s vice president for ground operations, Chris Johnson, declared a “state of operational emergency” in Denver due to a high number of absences among ramp workers. The absences included sick calls and requests for personal days off, according to reporting by the Washington Post.

Johnson told employees that a doctor’s note would be required for those who called in sick and requests for personal days would be denied until the state of emergency ended. Under a mandatory overtime policy, Johnson said, employees would also be required to work overtime if needed.

Mann told the Star-Telegram that the mandatory overtime approach that was apparent in the memo probably worked against Southwest’s desire. But he said this perfect storm of weather, staffing and outdated software finally caught up to Southwest.

“The industry runs on volunteerism to some level and people have always responded to some level,” he said. But working in extreme heat or zero temps has its limits. And when the term “mando,” short for mandatory overtime, became institutionalized, it had the opposite effect the airline likely was seeking.

”I think it is a cultural issue,” Mann said. ”It’s a combination of a longtime push on mandatory overtime and then you throw in the weather and it’s a confluence of things,” that led to the meltdown.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has called the rate of Southwest’s cancellations “disproportionate and unacceptable” and sought to ensure that the carrier was sticking by its obligations to stranded customers.

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan apologized to customers and employees in a video update Wednesday and said the airline was doing everything possible to return to normal operations.

“I have nothing but pride and respect for the efforts of the people of Southwest who are showing up in every way,” Jordan said. “The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well, 99 percent of the time; but clearly, we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what’s happening right now.”

‘It’s overwhelmed’

Capt. Michael Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told the Star-Telegram that outdated crew scheduling software is exacerbating the airlines problems. The software SkySolver, which is used to assign flight attendants and pilots to each flight, stopped working under the increased demand.

Without it, the airline has had to call and email crew members, which is ineffective on such a large scale. It’s been a nightmare, said Santoro, and resulted in hours-long wait times for crew members to get scheduled on flights.

“What it comes down to is our IT infrastructure and our scheduling department is not adequate to keep up with our complex point to point network,” Santoro told the Star-Telegram. “So you can’t keep track of pilots and flight attendants and airplanes and how we all match up together. When pilots and flight attendants get in the wrong places, or don’t make connections, it’s overwhelmed and can’t keep up with all the changes.”

Things started to go wrong for Southwest during the winter storm that rolled across most of the country late last week and through Christmas.

On Dec. 21, the airlines said it had canceled about 500 flights out of 8,000 for Thursday and Friday. The cancellations continued into the weekend with 1,635 cancellations on Christmas Day.

In a press release issued Monday, Southwest officials blamed the cancellations on “continuing challenges” from the recent extreme weather and apologized for “falling short.”

“Our Employees and Crews scheduled to work this holiday season are showing up in every single way,” officials said in the release. “We are beyond grateful for that. Our shared goal is to take care of every single Customer with the Hospitality and Heart for which we’re known. On the other side of this, we’ll work to make things right for those we’ve let down, including our Employees.”

Star-Telegram reporter Dalia Faheid and service journalism editor David Montesino contributed to this report.