Southwest Airlines Cancels Over 1,800 Flights Over the Weekend

Miami, Florida

Citing poor weather and air-traffic-control issues, Southwest Airlines cancelled over 1,800 flights over the weekend.

The Dallas-based airline was first forced to cancel a large number of flights after severe weather in Florida on Friday prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to impose an air-traffic-management program.

The cancellations left aircraft and crew members at the wrong airports for their ensuing flights and customers where they hadn’t planned to be.

Southwest then effectively pressed the reset button for its network on Saturday, a necessary move but one that resulted in 808, or 24%, cancellations on Saturday and 1,187 delays, according to FlightAware, a service that tracks such information.

On Sunday, Southwest cancelled 1,089 flights, or almost 28% of its schedule, as of 9 p.m. EDT. There were also 963 delays.

The airline continued to blame air-traffic-control issues on Sunday, causing the FAA to issue a statement saying that there hadn’t been any such issues since Friday.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)