by Donald Wood
Last updated: 3:22 PM ET, Mon October 11, 2021
Southwest Airlines was experiencing more delays and cancellations on Monday after major disruptions throughout the weekend.
According to The Associated Press, Southwest officials said inclement weather and air traffic control disruptions in Florida created the issues on Friday, which led to nearly 2,000 canceled flights and hundreds of delays through Sunday.
FlightAware revealed that over 360 flights were canceled and over 840 more were delayed as of Monday at 1:45 p.m. ET. Service at major airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Honolulu, Orlando and Phoenix was impacted by the ongoing issues on Monday.
Federal regulators in Florida said there were air traffic control staff shortages, but the delays and cancellations were likely due to Southwest's "own staffing and aircraft issues."
"We have a closer to normal operation today, navigating some new weather across our system," a Southwest spokesperson told The AP on Monday. "We spent the weekend working to recover from the high number of displaced crews, aircraft and customers."
While the carrier blamed bad weather and air traffic control disruptions for the delays and cancellations, United States Senator Ted Cruz and others have claimed the issues were caused by workers rejecting a new COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
A Southwest spokesperson told the AP that "the weekend challenges were not a result of Employee demonstrations, as some have reported," while the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said speculation of pilot protests were "false claims."
For the latest travel news, updates and deals, subscribe to the daily TravelPulse newsletter.
Topics From This Article to Explore
