Southwest flights are — finally — taking off, including from hard-hit Sacramento airport
After canceling thousands of flights this week, stranding travelers across dozens of U.S. airports — with Sacramento International among the most heavily affected— Southwest Airlines said Thursday it expects “minimal disruptions” Friday in the hopeful ending to its post-Christmas nightmare.
“While Southwest continues to operate roughly one-third of its schedule for Thursday, Dec. 29, we plan to return to normal operations with minimal disruptions on Friday, Dec. 30,” the airline said in a statement posted Thursday to its website.
“We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made to realign crew, their schedules, and our fleet.”
Southwest on Thursday canceled more than 2,300 flights nationwide for a fourth straight day, representing about 58% of its daily schedule, according to flight tracking website Flight Aware. No other U.S. domestic airline canceled more than 4%.
Sacramento International Airport had the highest cancellation rate Thursday of any U.S. airport for arrivals (38%) and departures (36%), Flight Aware data showed as of 1 p.m. Similar percentages of flights were scrapped Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Sacramento airport’s website as of 7 a.m. Friday showed only one canceled Southwest flight, an arrival from Ontario, California, with most of the remaining dozens on time or less than 10 minutes late. The airport on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings reported about 85% of the airport’s Southwest flights canceled. The airline makes up roughly two-thirds of Sacramento’s flight schedule.
The airline meltdown stemmed from an extreme winter storm that blanketed the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. starting last week and continuing into Christmas weekend, one of the year’s busiest travel windows.
But while other major U.S. airlines recovered from the arctic blast earlier this week, Southwest continued with mass cancellations.
The airline in multiple statements earlier this week cited issues with its scheduling system as the cause for its major disruptions.
Until Thursday, Southwest gave no specific estimate for its return to normal service, saying only that it would be canceling roughly two-thirds of its flights for “several” days.
Cancellations linked to bag thefts, ruined holiday plans
Cancellations wrought havoc on weary travelers, who told tales of sleeping in terminals, interstate treks in rental cars and a 400-mile Lyft ride across California — some of them missing most or all of their planned family vacations in the process.
Early Monday, thieves appeared to have taken advantage of the chaos: Four suspects allegedly stole from the piles of luggage that had accumulated at Sacramento International, then fled in a pickup truck, a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said.
The suspects, two men and two women, remain sought by law enforcement.
This story was originally published December 29, 2022 at 1:51 PM.
