What’s Up? (Dec. 25-31)
Stranded at the Airport
Thousands of travelers were stranded in airports across the country over the holidays as Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,900 flights on Monday and roughly 5,000 over Tuesday and Wednesday, more than 60 percent of its schedule. The disruptions were the result of staffing shortages and longstanding technological problems compounded by a fierce winter storm. Many customers said Southwest had done little or nothing to get them to their destinations. The airline’s chief executive of 10 months, Bob Jordan, apologized, and the company said it had called on over 1,000 corporate employees to manually schedule crews for new flights. But Southwest’s reputation is in tatters, and the scale of the chaos — which one industry analyst called “the worst round of cancellations for any single airline” in recent memory — has prompted the Department of Transportation to announce that it…
