The United States hopes to soon end the “blizzard of the century”, which killed at least 50 people. This violent cold snap also caused some chaos at the airports.
At airports, especially in Denver, Chicago and Baltimore, disruptions continued on Wednesday. Consequence of the series of flight cancellations around the Christmas weekend.
But while the pace of most airlines had returned to normal, one, Southwest, continued to deal with a service debacle in recent days. Of the roughly 2,800 flights canceled Wednesday morning, more than 2,500 were operated by Southwest, according to the FlightAware website.
In total, the company canceled more than 11,000 flights in a few days with an entire organization literally falling apart. For example, crews have found themselves stranded in the wrong place, at airports without planes.
Nightmare shared by passengers in some airports, suitcases get lost and pile up, like customers waiting for a new ticket.
Public apology from Southwest CEO
The CEO of the company, Bob Jordan, had to apologize publicly:
“We always take care of our customers and will go above and beyond what they expect of us. Our teams are hard at work processing refunds and proactively reaching out. We are making progress and hope to be operational before next week.”
On CNN, Southwest Pilots Association vice president Mike Santoro expressed his frustration, explaining in particular that the company had long suffered from a “largely outdated” computer system, which made it difficult to organize flights. .
“We’re tired of apologizing on behalf of Southwest,” he said, calling on the company to invest in upgrading its system. “This is the biggest disruption I’ve seen in my 16 years with the company (…). It’s embarrassing,” he said.
After a critical tweet from Joe Biden towards companies, the Senate also announces the opening of an investigation. Transport Minister Pete Buttigieg said he would take a close look at “what happened to his system.”
“While we understand that it is impossible to control the weather, the line has clearly been crossed here between an uncontrollable situation in terms of the weather and something that is the direct responsibility of the company,” he told NBC.
Source: BFM TV
