An unfortunate coincidence of historic winter storm Elliot and the peak of the year-end travel season, combined with structural problems related to staff shortages and outdated crew scheduling systems, led to thousands of cancelled flights in the days leading up to Christmas, with ramifications that continue today and are likely to extend into the new year.
While the cancellations were common among all US airlines, Southwest Airlines has been hit the hardest in proportion, having cancelled around 60% of its scheduled flights on Tuesday 27 December, in what represents an unprecedented meltdown in its history.
Southwest does not have an exceptionally large footprint in Latin America and the Caribbean. On average, according to Cirium, it operates about seven hundred flights per week to fifteen cities in the region (including San Juan, Puerto Rico) with 112,000 seats. This represents just 5% of the total offer of seats between the US and Latin America and the Caribbean, far behind American Airlines, the leader with 30%, United Airlines, in second place, with 15%, and JetBlue with 14%.
But in any case, the collapse of its operations has caused the airline to cancel more than 60 flights to the region between 24 December and, in principle, until 29 December, which could impact around 20,000 passengers, also considering return flights. This is a summary based on real-time information compiled by Aviacionline using the FlightRadar24 platform of Southwest’s flight status to Latin America and the Caribbean.
As part of the United States (although geographically in the Caribbean), San Juan, Puerto Rico is the city with the highest number of cancelled flights. At the time of this publication, it has thirty cancelled flights from Baltimore, thirteen from Orlando, four from Fort Lauderdale and three from Tampa. The company also flies from St. Louis, Houston-Hobby and Nashville, but so far, those flights are listed as unaffected.
Cancun is another of Southwest Airlines’ major destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean, where it operates an average of eighty-six flights a week. So far there are five cancelled flights from Houston, one from Denver, one from Baltimore, two from Chicago, one from Indianapolis, one from San Antonio and two from St. Louis. Flights from Austin, Fort Lauderdale, Nashville, Kansas City, New Orleans, and Phoenix are experiencing some delays.
In San Jose del Cabo Southwest has cancelled one flight from Austin, one from Houston and two from Orange County, while in Puerto Vallarta it cancelled one flight from Houston and three from Orange County, extending to 29 December. In Cozumel there is a cancelled flight from Denver and delays from Houston. Across the border in Belize City, there is also a cancelled flight from Denver.
In Costa Rica, the airline operates to Liberia/Guanacaste and San Jose. At both airports its flights from Houston and Baltimore are only delayed, except for one cancellation from Denver to Liberia.
In Punta Cana there are two cancelled flights from Fort Lauderdale and flights from Baltimore are delayed.
Southwest connects Aruba with Baltimore and Orlando. So far there are only delays, but no cancellations. The same happens in George Town in the Cayman Islands, where flights from Baltimore and Fort Lauderdale have not been cancelled.
In the Turks and Caicos Islands, Southwest has cancelled two flights from Fort Lauderdale and maintains delays from Baltimore.
In Montego Bay, Jamaica, the airline has cancelled one flight from Baltimore, two from Orlando and one from Fort Lauderdale, while in Havana there is only one cancelled flight from Tampa and delays on flights from Fort Lauderdale.
Finally, in Nassau, Bahamas, Southwest has so far one flight cancelled from Orlando and delays on flights from Baltimore.
All this information was compiled as of 2:00 PM UTC on Tuesday 27 September, and given the volatility of the situation it is expected that more delays will be added in the coming days.
Southwest had posted a statement on its website yesterday saying that «with consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, the ongoing challenges are impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable […] These operating conditions forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that has our teams working to recover the airline’s operational capacity.»
«This safety work is intentional, ongoing and necessary to return to normal reliability, one that minimises last minute inconvenience. We anticipate additional changes with an already reduced level of flying as we approach the upcoming New Year holiday travel period. And we are working to reach customers whose travel plans will change with specific information and their available options,» they concluded.
Because the phone lines are jammed, Southwest Airlines has set up this page with the different options passengers have to reschedule their flights or receive a refund.
