Thousands of Southwest Airlines cancellations caused difficulties over the weekend, and the carrier canceled at least 23 additional flights at BNA on Monday.
The cancellations were among hundreds of flights canceled around the nation on Monday after the airline canceled 39% of its flights on Sunday and 24% on Saturday.
Southwest apologized in a message to staff on Sunday for the weekend’s meltdown, and on Monday sent a new statement to The Tennessean praising customers and employees for their “continued patience” while it tries to reset its schedule.
“Thousands of Southwest Airlines cancellations caused difficulties over the weekend, and the carrier canceled at least 23 additional flights at BNA on Monday.
The cancellations were among hundreds of flights canceled around the nation on Monday after the airline canceled 39% of its flights on Sunday and 24% on Saturday.
Southwest apologized in a message to staff on Sunday for the weekend’s meltdown, and on Monday sent a new statement to The Tennessean praising customers and employees for their “continued patience” while it tries to reset its schedule.
“I’m sorry for the struggles that you and our customers are experiencing, once again,” Alan Kasher, the airline’s executive vice president of daily operations said of the 1,900 flight cancellations that stranded travelers and flight crews across the country.
According to flight tracker Flight Aware, 116 planes were delayed and 69 were canceled at Nashville International Airport on Sunday. Southwest canceled 63 flights at BNA and delayed another 67.
As of Monday afternoon, 32 flights had been canceled and 108 had been delayed at BNA.
Kasher’s message reaffirmed the airline’s earlier statements, blaming air traffic control concerns and terrible weather in Florida.
Southwest’s operations leader and incoming president, Mike Van de Ven, also commended Southwest staff in a video message late Sunday for their “heroic efforts” to assist travelers, saying that Southwest’s operations “seem to be on track for a reset so that Monday is more normal.”
Travelers are advised to verify their flight status before departing for the airport. Southwest issued a statement the day before that didn’t reference the supposed pilot strike.
Southwest released this statement Monday:
“The weekend challenges were not a result of employee demonstrations, as some have reported. We have a closer to normal operation today, navigating some new weather across our system. To recap the weekend cancellations, the bad weather and ATC issues in Florida, a large operation for us, on Friday night created significant flight disruptions throughout our network and we spent the weekend working to recover from the high number of displaced crews, aircraft, and customers. Although we have some new weather in parts of our system, today’s operation has vastly improved from the weekend, with a much smaller number of cancellations linked to our weekend recovery efforts.”