Over 200 Southwest Flights Canceled At BWI As Crisis Continues

LINTHICUM, MD — More than 2,500 Southwest Airline flights across the United States Wednesday have been canceled, including 203 scheduled at Baltimore/Washington International Airport in what a Biden administration official called a "meltdown" of the airline's system.

Southwest has been affected more than any other airline by last week's massive winter storm. Of the nearly 2,800 flights within, into or out of the United States that had been canceled Wednesday, over 2,500 of them are Southwest. The airline said it would operate roughly a third of its schedule over the next several days.

According to FlightAware, out of 205 flights canceled Wednesday at BWI Airport, 203 of them are Southwest flights and the other two are Spirit Airlines.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN he spoke to Southwest CEO Bob Jordan on Tuesday about the thousands of flights that have been canceled this week with no indication of when passengers can rebook.

“Their system really has completely melted down,” Buttigieg told CNN. “I made clear that our department will be holding them accountable for their responsibilities to customers, both to get them through this situation and to make sure that this can’t happen again.”

In a video statement Tuesday, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said he was "truly sorry."

"Southwest builds its flight schedule around communities, not hubs. ... Cities where large numbers of scheduled flights simultaneously froze as record bitter cold brought challenges for all airlines," Jordan said.

"Our network is highly complex and the operation of the airline counts on all the pieces, especially aircraft and crews remaining in motion to where they're planned to go," he said.

Buttigieg said the airline was having issues with systems for managing its schedule and crew. He noted that the rest of the aviation industry was on its way to recovery following the worst of the storm with cancellations on other airlines being significantly lower.

Pointing to customer service commitments the department had secured from major airlines over the summer, Buttigieg said they would be using that as a tool for accountability. Jordan pledged that Southwest would not only meet but exceed the customer service standards, according to Buttigieg.

Southwest Airlines added that customers could get their tickets refunded but warned those who plan to immediately rebook that availability is limited. Customers trying to reach the airline's call centers were experiencing long wait times.

The airline has a systemwide waiver in place until Jan.2 and encouraged customers to use self service options to rebook or cancel flights.

Scenes from airports shared on social media show bags piled up at airports across the country as customers were left stranded. Customers also faced long hold times when trying to reach the airline over the phone.

One family traveling south with five children was thankful they got tablets for Christmas to keep them occupied after their Southwest flight at BWI was canceled.

“Hoping that we can get a flight, otherwise we’re looking at possibly renting a car tomorrow. But yeah, everything’s been booked. Even car rentals are booked,” Holly Abotossaway told NBC Washington.

Passengers said they have waited six hours or more daily at the airport in hopes they can catch a flight or find their baggage.

“Nobody knew what was going on. There was like no directions or anything. You go to the front of the line, they didn’t know what was happening. You go to somebody for some help, they didn’t know what was happening,” AJ Jallow told NBC. “There was like a lot of misdirection… there was a lot of confusion."

Edward Russell, editor of Airline Weekly, told WTOP that “what happened was crews and planes got out of place and Southwest system, old technology systems that schedule those crews and planes and they lost track of where people work. And that’s what we’re seeing the result of over this week.”

“It’s the perfect storm of not enough staff, antiquated tech and a little bit of weather,” said CBS travel editor Peter Greenberg on WTOP.

A Southwest spokesman told the Washington Post that tools that match flight attendants with planes were “struggling” in the wake of the recent winter storm. The spokesman denied that the airline is understaffed, reiterating that its scheduling tools were having problems keeping up.

Lyn Montgomery, president of TWU Local 556, a union that represents about 18,000 Southwest flight attendants, blamed the problems on outdated scheduling technology. Flight crews often had to be notified manually about flight changes, a process that sometimes involved flight attendants waiting on hold for hours to speak to workers who handle scheduling, Montgomery told the Washington Post.