Canceled flights strand travelers at San Antonio’s airport – San Antonio Express-News

Mooney is among thousands of stranded holiday travelers who were no closer to home Tuesday as the Christmas weekend storm’s aftermath continued to play out at airline counters across the country — and put Southwest Airlines in damage-control mode.

At San Antonio International Airport, 70 flights had been canceled by 10 a.m. Tuesday — more than were scrubbed either Sunday or Monday. Hardest hit are passengers traveling on Southwest, the San Antonio airport’s biggest passenger carrier.

Disruptions were likely to continue throughout the week at U.S. airports, where canceled flights caused weary homebound travelers to sleep on floors and wait hours in line for customer service.

Across the U.S., more than 4,600 U.S. flights were canceled and nearly 2,300 others delayed by 10 a.m. Tuesday, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. Most of the cancellations — more than 2,500 of them — were by Southwest, which had already called off more than 60 percent of its flights for the day.

Southwest also has canceled nearly 2,500 flights scheduled for Wednesday, among about 3,500 cancellations by all airlines that day. Sixty-six of those — all on Southwest — are canceled at San Antonio International.

Tuesday’s unfolding chaos followed similar scenes Monday, when more than 4,000 U.S. flights — most also operated by Southwest — were canceled and more than 8,500 others delayed, FlightAware reported.

Southwest Airlines said in a statement Monday the travel disruptions were “unacceptable” and that its network was behind because of the winter storm that slammed parts of the country with heavy snow, ice and strong winds much of last week.

Mooney, a physician, found that one leg of her Southwest trip — from Pittsburgh to Nashville — was operating Tuesday. But she discovered the flight for the second leg had been scrapped when she logged into the airline’s mobile app and saw an alert. She said she didn’t receive a text notifying her of the cancellation, which “was really atypical.”

Mooney said she could only re-book after Saturday, as the airline’s app indicated no other flights were available before then — and driving would take several days.

‘Heartfelt apologies’

“Our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning,” Southwest said Monday, adding that it was working to address the disruptions by “rebalancing the airline and repositioning” crews.

By late Monday and into Tuesday morning, Southwest was in damage-control mode, responding to angry and frustrated customers on Twitter. The airline repeatedly apologized for the cancellations and offered assistance through direct messages, which did not appease everyone.

“With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable,” the airline said in a statement. The storm “forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity.”

“Our biggest issue at this time is getting our crews and our aircraft in the right places,” Chris Perry, a spokesperson for Southwest, said in an email. A statement on the airline’s website called the cancellations “unacceptable.”

It said 23 of its 25 top airports were affected by the storm.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said in a statement Monday that it would look into the Southwest issue, adding that it was concerned by the airline’s “unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays” and reports of poor customer service.

Henry Harteveldt, an airline analyst, said in an email that Southwest’s structure made it “uniquely vulnerable to weather problems, especially one as geographically extensive and as intensive as this storm has been.”

“I don’t recall seeing an airline experience such a massive operational problem as we are currently seeing at Southwest,” he said.

Most airlines operate on a “hub/spoke” basis, with planes returning back to a hub airport after flying out to other cities, but Southwest planes tend to make multiple stops across the country, he said.

Hub/spoke airlines can shut down specific routes when bad weather hits, resuming operations when conditions improve, but Southwest can’t do that as easily without disrupting multiple flights, he said.

No rebooking

David Vernon, another airline analyst at financial firm Sanford C. Bernstein, said the system enables higher use of planes during normal times but can cause cascading negative effects when things go wrong.

Making matters worse for customers: Southwest has a policy of not exchanging tickets with other airlines, so the airline could not rebook passengers on other flights, Harteveldt said. The debacle could force the airline to “buy back” frustrated customers with deeper discounts or conduct more promotions, he said.

Ryan Green, Southwest’s chief commercial officer, told the Wall Street Journal the airline is taking steps like covering customers’ reasonable travel costs — including hotels, rental cars and tickets on other airlines — and will be communicating the process for customers to have expenses reimbursed.

People whose flights have been canceled are entitled to refunds if they opt not to travel, Green was quoted as saying.

Mooney, a physician, wound up booking an American Airlines flight for Friday at a cost of about $500. Earlier flights cost from $800 to $1,000, she said, not including luggage fees.

She had to cancel her clinic through Friday but because she is working part-time said it’s “not as bad as it could have been.” Mooney is staying with her parents in Pittsburgh and a dog-sitter was willing to stay with her pets in San Antonio for several more days.

“When it’s five days, you have to think of so many different things,” said Mooney, 38. “For some people it’s medication, dog-sitting. Even just calling the extended parking lot and telling them not to tow my car.”

Its performance left the Dallas-based carrier as an outlier in the industry, with United Airlines Holdings, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines Group and JetBlue Airways all reporting no more than 2 percent of their flights canceled Tuesday.

No single region or airport bore the brunt of the cancellations. On Tuesday morning, more than 155 flights originating at Denver International Airport, or about 17 percent of its outgoing traffic, were canceled, and more than 115 flights, or about 38 percent, were canceled out of Chicago Midway International, which is Southwest’s Chicago base. More than 100 flights were canceled at Harry Reid International in Las Vegas, and similar numbers were reported for Baltimore-Washington International, Dallas Love Field in Texas and Nashville International in Tennessee.

It has been nearly a week since the winter storm began wreaking havoc for millions of people counting on airlines to get them to and from holiday destinations.

The number of canceled flights began to rise last Thursday, when airlines called off more than 2,600 of them. The next day, nearly 6,000, or about a quarter of all U.S. flights, were canceled across the country. On Saturday, Christmas Eve, nearly 3,500 flights were canceled, and slightly fewer, at about 3,200, were cut from the schedules on Christmas Day.

Mooney said she has been happy with Southwest’s service in the past but plans to monitor delays and cancellations more closely in the coming months.

“I don’t think one incident is going to make me change my mind, as long as it doesn’t become their norm,” she said.

Southwest’s shares were down about 5 percent by midmorning, while United rose and American and Delta declined about 1 percent.

This story includes information from Express-News wire services.

madison.iszler@express-news.net