If you tried to fly for the holidays, there’s a good chance you didn’t get where you need to go — particularly if you flew Southwest Airlines. The major airline canceled 2,886 flights on Monday — that’s 70% of scheduled flights, and about half the total number of canceled flights across all airlines. And that’s not including cancellations by Southwest on Sunday and today, per FlightAware. As a result, the U.S. Transportation Department (USDOT), led by Pete Buttigieg, is taking a long hard look at Southwest’s aggressive smashing of the “cancel” button.
"USDOT is concerned by Southwest Airlines’ disproportionate and unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays as well as the failure to properly support customers experiencing a cancellation or delay," the department said in a statement, per Reuters. USDOT added that it would "closely examine whether cancellations were controllable and whether Southwest is complying with its customer service plan as well as all other pertinent DOT rules." Pete Buttigieg, the current Secretary of Transportation, also shared on Twitter that he is “tracking [the series of cancellations] closely & will have more to say about this” today.
