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Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
Business

‘System failure’: US blames Southwest Airlines for meltdown

Travelers at Baltimore Washington International airport deal with the impact of Southwest Airlines canceling more than 12,000 flights around the Christmas holiday weekend across the country and in Baltimore, Maryland, US December 27, 2022.  [Michael A. McCoy/Reuters]

The administration of US President Joe Biden has called the meltdown that led to the cancellation of thousands of flights at Southwest Airlines a “system failure”, blaming the company itself for the crisis.

A historic winter storm, dubbed the “blizzard of the century“, had blanketed the country around the holiday weekend, but Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said on Wednesday that the level of cancellations at Southwest cannot be justified by the extreme weather.

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