From The Texas Tribune: Southwest Airlines’ holiday meltdown brings on federal investigation.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines faces a federal investigation into whether it violated its own legally required customer service plan amid a blizzard of flight cancellations that ruined plans and angered travelers over the Christmas holiday.
In a statement late Monday, officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation called the service meltdown, which resulted in the cancellation or delay of most of the carrier’s flights over the holiday weekend, “disproportionate and unacceptable.”
As Winter Storm Elliott started to wreak havoc on a large chunk of the U.S., the vast majority of canceled flights across the nation were operated by Southwest Airlines. And air travelers’ woes are likely to continue this week.
“USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service,” the agency posted on Twitter on Monday evening. “The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted shortly after that he was “tracking [the issue] closely” and would have more to say about this Tuesday.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the DOT said on Twitter that Buttigieg had spoken “with union leaders and the CEO of Southwest Airlines to convey the Department’s expectation that Southwest meet its obligations to passengers and workers and take steps to prevent a situation like this from happening again.”
Southwest officials said in a message to employees, obtained by the The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, that staffing issues were a large part of the reason the planes were being grounded after pilots and other staff couldn’t get to the airports where they were needed.
