Southwest CEO Apologizes After Week of Flight Cancellations

If you’ve been traveling this holiday season, you’ve probably heard about the trouble Southwest Airlines is having with delays and cancellations.

©Reuters

While many airlines struggled with the severe weather last week, Southwest Airlines has had a much harder time recovering from all of the chaos. They canceled over 60% of their flights on Monday alone, and the trend continued in the following days.

This level of upset, which the U.S. Department of Transportation has called an “unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays,” has caused many customers stress and frustration, and Twitter has been in an uproar as a result.

Crowds at Orlando International Airport

However, according to Wall Street Journal, the CEO of the company, Bob Jordan, released a statement apologizing for the events that to the backlash this week.

©Wall Street Journal

In the statement, Jordan apologizes to both customers and employees and states that they are doing everything they can to get back to normal operations. Unfortunately, that means they will be running a significantly reduced schedule to have a chance to make these corrections.

We hope Southwest can recover from this quickly

According to Jordan, the system in place to deal with setbacks like the severe weather that happened last week can handle the struggle 99% of the time. However, he states that they clearly need to double down on the already existing plans to upgrade the system.

We will keep you updated as more information is released, so stay tuned.