Southwest canceled more than two-thirds of its flights in the U.S. Monday, and more than 60% on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The company said it plans to operate just over a third of its usual schedule in the coming days. The over 13,000 Southwest cancelations since Thursday have left thousands of people stranded at airports across the country.
No other airline has a cancelation rate above 2% during the 2022 holiday travel season.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg met with Southwest leaders Tuesday. In a statement, the transportation department said it expects Southwest to take steps in order to “prevent a situation like this from happening again.”
When a flight is canceled or severely delayed and it’s the airline’s fault, they are responsible for taking care of the customer. Southwest needs to make good on its promise to travelers. pic.twitter.com/Cs9ZqozYwj
— TransportationGov (@USDOT) December 28, 2022
Rich Ford of the Park City Area Lodging Association said the dysfunction is leading to some room cancellations.
“Generally, yes, we’re up in cancelations,” Ford said.
“Due to the whole system issue. Most of our people come from Texas, Florida, California, New York — we get people from all over the country. We’re seeing people that are delayed a day, two days, some people just flat out canceling because they can’t get here.”
He said for most people planning on a longer trip, the breaking point of deciding not to go is usually two days of dealing with delays.
“They were supposed to arrive on Monday, they can’t here until Wednesday or Thursday now,” Ford said.
Rhonda Sideris, founder of Park City Lodging, said she’s dealing with a similar situation.
“I had a guy yesterday… his flights were canceled but he drove 14 hours to get here," Sideris. "And we’re allowing people to change by a day or two, but if they didn’t purchase the trip insurance, our homeowners have mortgages to pay.”
She said her company is also dealing with several visitors who can’t get a flight out of Utah to get home, and need to extend their stays.
Cancelation policies vary throughout Park City.
The Yarrow for example offers refunds if people cancel with 30 days’ notice, but a receptionist said they offer refunds if guests are impacted by flight cancellations.
Comparatively, the Montage Deer Valley has a 60-day refund policy in place for this week. A representative from the hotel said guests impacted by flight screw-ups will have to make refund requests with upper management, as they are approved on a case-by-case basis.
Nancy Vollmer, spokeswoman for the Salt Lake City International Airport, said the holiday travel season has been smooth there so far compared to other airports like Denver.
“We haven’t seen people that are stranded or stuck out here," Vollmer said.
"I think what has happened is that some of the airlines, including Southwest, have preemptively canceled flights, so that means passengers knew not to come out to the airport.”
Several airlines, including Delta and United, announced Wednesday that they are instituting fare caps at airports where Southwest operates in order to help people get where they need to be without paying exorbitant ticket prices.
