Southwest announces it will resume normal operations Friday

Southwest Airlines Plans to resume normal operations Friday, after the cancellation of thousands flights Inclement weather has caused severe weather for the past week weather.

The company far surpassed other major carriers by nixing 2,909 flights scheduled on Monday, marking 71% of the company’s volume, according to data FlightAware. Southwest also cancelled 2,536 flights Tuesday and 2,510 Wednesday, which represent 63% and 61%, respectively.

Though 2,361 flights were canceled as of Thursday afternoon, amounting to 58% of the company’s volume, Southwest said in a statement They “plan to return to normal operations with minimal disruptions” As soon as Friday

“We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made to realign Crew, their schedules, and our fleet. With another holiday weekend full of important connections for our valued Customers and Employees, we are eager to return to a state of normalcy,” The company noted. “We have much work ahead of us, including investing in new solutions to manage wide-scale disruptions. We aim to serve our Customers and Employees with our legendary levels of Southwest Hospitality and reliability again very soon.”

Southwest shares prices fallen nearly 6% over the past five trading days; the company’s stock has plummeted more than 22% since the beginning of the year. FlightAware data shows that Southwest has 39 flights cancelled for Friday.

The Christmas weekend saw the winter storm and subsequent cancellations. According to estimates, 52.4 million passengers had planned to leave airports between December 18-January 3, representing a 20% increase on last year. data Hopper.

Ryan Green, Southwest Chief Commercial Officer, stated during an interview The Wall Street Journal reported that the airline would pay for the accommodation and rent-a-car costs of thousands of passengers who were stranded on flights. Even though airlines do not offer refunds for flights that were cancelled, customers who are affected can get their money back. not required If passengers are bumped from an already sold plane, they will be reimbursed for missed or delayed flights.

The Department of Transportation said That the agency will “examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.” Pete Buttigieg is Transportation Secretary spoke Southwest CEO Bob Jordan will ensure the company’s success. “meet its obligations to passengers and workers and take steps to prevent a situation like this from happening again.”

Southwest cancelled the majority of flights, despite other carriers maintaining most of their capacity. American Airlines and United Airlines canceled 14 and 19 flights on Thursday, according to data from FlightAware, marking less than 1% of each company’s departures.

According to The East Coast Times, winter weather caused over a million homes to lose power and caused businesses and homes to go out of business. data From PowerOutage.US. Maine and North Carolina had the highest numbers of customers without power on Christmas Eve with approximately 171,000 and 151,000 respectively. New York and Tennessee had 101,000 to 110,000 people without power while Connecticut had 69,000.

Other obstacles were created by severe weather major delivery services Americans waited in vain for Christmas gifts last minute. FedEx and UPS issued statements warning about delays, while Amazon closed multiple locations and the United States Postal Service shut down several others.

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