Last week’s winter weather travel mess is lingering like a vicious hangover into this week — and the headaches have been migraine-proportioned for Southwest Airlines, its CEO Bob Jordan, airline employees and most of all its frustrated passengers on Monday.
More than 3,900 flights within, into or out of the US had already been canceled by
10:50 p.m. ET Monday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, while almost
8,200 flights had been delayed.
But Southwest accounts for a whopping share of those. None of the other US carriers have canceled nearly as many flights or as much of their schedule as Southwest.
The Dallas-based airline had canceled 71% of its flights — just over 2,900 total — as of
10:10 p.m. ET Monday, according to FlightAware. At one point, the airline canceled around 300 flights in the span of a half hour Monday afternoon.
And it looks like the Southwest pain will spread into Tuesday.
More than 2,400 of those flights were already canceled as of 10:50 p.m. ET Monday.
That’s the lion’s share of the more than 2,600 flight cancellations reported so far for Tuesday for all US airlines.

CEO: ‘A lot of issues in the operation’
On Christmas night, ahead of Monday’s meltdown, Jordan told employees the airline has “a lot of issues in the operation right now.”
CNN was provided a transcript of the message to Southwest employees by an aviation source.
Jordan told employees, “Part of what we’re suffering is a lack of tools. We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that.”
Jordan told The Wall Street Journal the company plans to operate just over a third of its schedule in upcoming days to give itself the ability for crews to get into the right positions.

On social media, customers are complaining loudly about long lines to speak with representatives, problems with lost bags and excessive wait times or busy signals on the airline’s customer service telephone lines

On Monday evening, Southwest representatives at Denver International Airport made an announcement over airport terminal speakers indicating flight rebooking for stranded passengers would not be available until Friday,according to reports.
The announcement also said new bookings would not be possible until January 3.
People in line appeared to shrug off the announcement,as most people have been unsuccessful reaching representatives over the phone and the website is not operational.