The game of “they said/they said” continues – and thousands of customers are caught in the middle with more than two-thousand Southwest flights being cancelled since Friday. As we told you yesterday, the airline has been saying it’s about “air traffic control staffing issues” and “disruptive weather.”
The FAA disagrees – and so does the Southwest Pilots’ Union. After a chaotic mess over the weekend, the trouble continued yesterday – with 350 more cancellations, 14-hundred other flights delayed. In all? It amounted to about half of the airline’s schedule being impacted.
Pilots have been saying it’s not their fault (even though the issues appeared to coincide with their lawsuit over mandated vaccines) – they’re saying it’s management. And now, the company is admitting internally that staffing IS an issue and that they trying to address it with “a very aggressive hiring plan.”
- Unions for both Southwest AND American say management persuaded pilots to take leaves of absence during the pandemic – and they’re being too slow in bringing them back. leaving them short-handed.
Source:ABC News