Southwest Airlines flights cancellations continue to increase

2020 was the peak of the coronavirus pandemic across the globe which saw a major downfall in the travel demand and left the airports deserted. But with the beginning of 2021 the COVID-19 restrictions started to ease across the globe and the travel demand also hot back. With an increase in the demand, the low-fare airline giant Southwest Airlines Flight was quick to increase the number of flights. But the problem was that the airline struggled to keep up with its new and increased flights due to a number of reasons including bad weather, shortage of staff members and IT outage.

The concern here is that of the airline continues to deal with such shortage and does not manage them then it will not be able to look forward to the growth that it has been looking forward to since a long time. It was only in June, 2021 when the airline cancelled more than 2,600 flights which makes an average of 90 flights in a day. Moreover, nearly 34,000 of its flights were delayed. The carrier could not outperform its competitors by wide margins.

The trouble for the airline started by the middle of the month, when the weather data provider was responsible for the delay of more than 1,400 flights. And then it was the IT outage that forced the airline to cancel more than 500 flights and delayed more than 1,300 other flights. This was not the end and the flight cancellations graph went on to go up in the upcoming days.

At the same time the executives from Southwest said that the carrier continues to operate more flights than it did before the pandemic. It was added that the carrier has managed to spread across more routes and cities. Due to this the airline is facing operational complexity and has made it hard for it to recover from the weather and other challenges.

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