Southwest cancels thousands of flights since weekend — how it’s affecting Sacramento’s airport

Southwest Airlines canceled more than 360 flights across the country Monday after a turbulent weekend for the airline saw thousands of cancellations and delays.

Those canceled flights comprise around 10% of all scheduled flights, according to FlightAware.com. More than 740 Southwest flights were also delayed Monday.

Southwest’s challenges, which reportedly took place on the airline’s busiest weekend since the pandemic began, are affecting some travelers at Sacramento International Airport. FlightAware numbers show the airport is dealing with five canceled flights Monday. All five of those cancellations are Southwest flights. Airport spokesman Scott Johnston said Sacramento International is not seeing any widespread delays or issues Monday.

On Sunday, SMF saw 15 canceled flights. All but one were Southwest flights.

Even on Monday, larger airports were faring much worse. Backups continued to be seen at Southwest’s larger destinations — including Chicago, Denver and Baltimore — where travelers shared their frustrations on social media. Many flights also were canceled at Southwest’s home airport in Dallas.

Gary Grossman wasn’t happy about waiting six hours Monday at Terminal B for his flight to Phoenix. But the Arizona State professor was relatively lucky: his 10:05 a.m. Southwest flight was canceled, and he and his wife were rebooked for a 4 p.m. departure. Grossman said it was a bad ending to a fun reunion weekend at the University of Pacific in Stockton, where he graduated in 1971.

“I’d rather be somewhere else than the airport for six hours,” Grossman said.

Other travelers who had their flights canceled Sunday flying to and from Sacramento were told that the soonest Southwest could rebook them for a flight was Tuesday.

Southwest is not a part of the three major air carrier alliances, so rebooking an alternative is tougher. That led some passengers to pay their own way and switch to other airlines, leading to booked up flights at SMF on Monday.

Passengers questioned the reasons for delay. The cause for Southwest’s troubles is unclear. While the airline blamed bad weather and air traffic control problems, the Federal Aviation Administration tweeted on Sunday no air traffic staffing shortages have been reported since Friday, when the Southwest challenges began.

Despite speculation, both the airline and the union representing Southwest pilots denied that the operational difficulties were due to employee protests over the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Several airlines including Southwest have mandated the vaccine because of new federal rules requiring vaccines for federal contractors.

The president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association denied in a statement Sunday that the delays were caused by employees protesting over the recent vaccine mandate for federal contractors. The union did not initiate any work slowdowns or sickouts, according to the statement.

“SWA has claimed that the immediate causes of this weekend’s meltdown were staffing at Jacksonville Center and weather in the southeast U.S., but what was a minor temporary event for other carriers devastated Southwest Airlines because our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure,” Casey Murray, the pilots’ union president, said in the statement. “Our operation and our frontline employees have endured continuous and unending disruptions since the first time our airline made headlines in early June due to widespread IT failures. Our pilots are tired and frustrated because our operation is running on empty due to a lack of support from the company.”

Southwest released a statement Monday extending apologies to customers and employees, again blaming delays and cancellations on weather and “other external constraints.”

“While we do not have specific airport numbers to share, Southwest Teams have been working diligently to restore stability to the network, and we are experiencing less disruptions on Monday,” the statement said. “We hope to restore our full schedule as soon as possible.”

The statement went on again to deny that the slowdowns were a result of union action.

This story was originally published October 11, 2021 at 1:43 PM.