Southwest Airlines, which has faced increasing criticism for its number of flight cancellations on Monday, including in San Diego, has announced that it will operate one-third of its scheduled flights "for the next several days."
Nearly all remaining flights out of the San Diego International Airport (SAN) and several inbound flights were canceled Monday evening. By the night's end, nearly 175 Southwest flights were canceled from SAN, according to the flight tracking tool FlightAware. Another 160-some were already canceled for both Tuesday and Wednesday.
“We are looking at two to three or even four days to get everyone rebooked,” a Southwest representative told some travelers at San Diego International's Terminal 1 after asking them where they were headed.
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For most travelers to and from SAN, the holiday weekend was already a nightmare. One couple told NBC 7 they were scheduled to land in San Diego at 10 a.m. Christmas Day. After two flight cancelations and other delays, they arrived Monday evening.
Sarah Piecukonis was trying to get back to Memphis, Tennessee but, "I’ve tried every airline, airport here in California. They canceled it last night at 10:50 p.m. and said they weren’t going to rebook. I showed up [at SAN] just to see if anything is possible and they still said they weren’t rebooking and there are no flights available until at least New Year's Eve."
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Others had trouble getting out.
"They changed our gate which was fine then next thing they went ahead and canceled it but there was no announcement at first then I went over to the board and I’m like oh my goodness it’s canceled," Shannon Kilgariff said.
Freda Wilson was supposed to be on a flight to her family in Houston, Texas. Instead, "We were canceled without notification, and we were unable to reschedule. All flights were booked through December 30th."
Bags were scattered across Terminal 1 as travelers waited in long lines to speak with representatives about their flights. As midnight approached, several travelers found places to sleep inside.
"We have had people crying, in distress, just having some mental breakdowns, meltdowns," one woman told NBC 7.
Blaming the chaos to their flight schedule on this past week's winter storm, Southwest said in a statement that the winter weather caused disruptions to their full holiday travel plans, causing the catastrophic cancellations.
"We were fully staffed and prepared for the approaching holiday weekend when the severe weather swept across the continent, where Southwest is the largest carrier in 23 of the top 25 travel markets in the U.S," the airlines' statement read. "These operational conditions forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity."
"This safety-first work is intentional, ongoing, and necessary to return to normal reliability, one that minimizes last-minute inconveniences," the statement continued. "As we continue the work to recover our operation, we have made the decision to continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one third of our schedule for the next several days."
Southwest spokesman Jay McVay said at a press conference in Houston that cancellations snowballed as storm systems moved across the country, leaving flight crews and planes out of place.
“So we’ve been chasing our tails, trying to catch up and get back to normal safely, which is our number one priority as quickly as we could,” he said. "And that’s exactly how we ended up where we are today.”
The flight cancellations come at a time when passengers are trying to fly home or to a travel destination following the holiday weekend. The increased headaches caused by Southwest's cancellations has led to many customer complaints and scrutiny from the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has said it will look into why there were so many cancellations or delays and whether the airline is "complying with its customer service plan, as well as all other pertinent DOT rules.”
The severe winter weather has caused at least 17,000 flights to be cancelled across the country since Wednesday, but Southwest Airlines has faced the height of schedule struggles. While other airlines had a few cancelled flights on Monday, Delta with around 300 and United with 130, Southwest had at least 2,893, according to NBC News.
Southwest Airlines continued to apologize for its cancellations.
"We recognize falling short and sincerely apologize," the airline said in its statement.
