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Southwest CEO Calls On Employees To Get It Together Amid Mass Cancellations

   DailyWire.com
Long Beach, CA - December 27: Many airplanes are on the ground as Southwest Airlines has canceled hundreds of flights, departing from airports across Southern California including Long Beach on Tuesday, December 27, 2022. (Photo by Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images)
Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan called on employees to get it together as thousands of delays and cancellations left post-holiday travelers and their bags stranded in airports all across the country.

According to a report from entertainment website TMZ, Jordan sent a message out to airline employees as reports of stranded travelers continued to pile up. “We’ve got to get out of this. We’ve got to get to the point where we’re reliable and we get our Customers, our Crews, our aircraft, everything on track,” he said.

As Southwest operates on about one-third of its scheduled flights, the airline has promised to “honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation” for travelers who are forced to adjust their plans.

“We had a tough day today,” Jordan told The Wall Street Journal on Monday evening. “In all likelihood we’ll have another tough day tomorrow as we work our way out of this. This is the largest-scale event that I’ve ever seen.”

The airline has been struggling to regain its footing since a winter storm gripped much of the country just before Christmas — but the disruption brought on by the severe weather threw Southwest’s scheduling system into chaos, and they have yet to fully recover.

So many flights have been canceled — over 12,000 since December 23 — that the U.S. Department of Transportation announced a plan to investigate the airline’s compliance with its posted customer service policy.

“USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service,” the department tweeted from its official account. “The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg added, “I’m tracking closely & will have more to say about this tomorrow.”

Southwest Airlines representative Jay McVay said that after the initial weather-related cancellations, the main issue was getting pilots and flight staff to the right locations for the remaining flights on the schedule.

“With those [cancellations], you end up with flight crews and airplanes that are out [of] place and not in the cities that they need to be in to continue to run our operations — that is ultimately exactly how we ended up where we are,” he said. “It’s trying to get our flight crews back into cities where they need to be to operate our flight schedules and then reaccommodate everyone that we can.”

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