Widespread flight cancellations affect operations at T.F. Green

TRAVELERS WAIT in long lines at Los Angeles International Airport's Southwest Airlines ticket counter on Monday. The low-cost carrier had to cancel thousands of flights in recent days, including 18 flights at Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport in Warwick on Tuesday and another nine flights scheduled for Wednesday. / AP PHOTO/EUGENE GARCIA
TRAVELERS WAIT in long lines at Los Angeles International Airport's Southwest Airlines ticket counter on Monday. The low-cost carrier had to cancel thousands of flights in recent days, including 18 flights at Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport in Warwick on Tuesday and another nine flights scheduled for Wednesday. / AP PHOTO/EUGENE GARCIA

WARWICK – A deadly weekend storm that brought power outages and freezing temperatures is continuing to wreak havoc on travel plans as flight delays and cancellations continued on Tuesday, a majority of which involved Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co. 

Southwest – the airline that carries the most passengers in and out of Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport  – has canceled 18 arriving and departing flights at Green Tuesday, representing all of the cancellations reported at the airport. A small number of flight delays were reported for JetBlue Airways Corp., Breeze Airways and American Airlines, according to the flight tracker Flightaware.com 

Nationwide, Southwest has canceled thousands of flights in recent days, including a total of 4,640 flights on Tuesday, while 10,494 flights have been delayed, according to the site. 

Problems at Southwest appeared to snowball after the worst of the storm passed. It canceled more than 70% of its flights Monday, more than 60% on Tuesday, and warned that it would operate just over a third of its usual schedule in the days ahead to allow crews to get back to where they needed to be, according to The Associated Press.

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American, United, Delta and JetBlue, suffered cancellations rates of between none and 2% nationally by Tuesday.

Despite Tuesday’s cancelations and delays at Green, travel conditions at the airport had improved, according to John Goodman, vice president of media and public relations for Rhode Island Airport Corp., the quasi-public agency which operates the state’s airports. 

Green has been working “to accommodate [stranded] passengers,” said Goodman, adding that travelers are offered discounts at local hotels. 

“Should there be any travelers impacted, we can also try to accommodate them at the airport,” he added. 

As for issues with specific airlines, those should be addressed directly or through the U.S. Department of Transportation, the federal agency that regulates air travel, Goodman said. Customers are entitled to a full refund for any cancellations or “significant delays,” although USDOT has not specifically defined what qualifies as a significant delay, according to its website. 

As for hotel or alternative travel reimbursement, “each airline has its own policies,” d Goodman. 

The disparity in cancelation between Southwest and other airlines has triggered a closer look at Southwest operations by the USDOT, which called the rate of cancellations “disproportionate and unacceptable,” and sought to ensure that the Dallas carrier was sticking by its obligations to stranded customers.

The size and severity of the storm created havoc for airlines. Airports were overwhelmed by intense snowfall and drifts. Airlines canceled as many as 20% of their flights Saturday and Sunday and Buffalo Niagara International Airport, close to the epicenter of the storm, remained closed Tuesday.

Southwest has already canceled nine flights out of T.F. Green scheduled for Wednesday. The company released a statement Monday saying they were “working with safety at the forefront to urgently address wide-scale disruption by rebalancing the airline and repositioning crews and our fleet ultimately to best serve all who plan to travel with us.” 

“We were fully staffed and prepared for the approaching holiday weekend when severe weather swept across the continent,” it read. 

Southwest spokesman Jay McVay said at a press conference in Houston that cancellations snowballed as storms moved across the country, leaving flight crews and planes out of place.

“So we’ve been chasing our tails, trying to catch up and get back to normal safely, which is our number one priority as quickly as we could,” he said. “And that’s exactly how we ended up where we are today.”

USDOT posted a statement on its Twitter account reading in part the agency “is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays and reports of lack of prompt customer service” and the department “will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.” 

Passengers posted numerous complaints on social media sites on Monday and Tuesday, citing inadequate communication and customer service. Southwest pinned a tweet to its Twitter account on Monday announcing it continued “to experience high call and social inquiry volumes,” telling customers to check their flight status and explore self-service options. 

The link to the self-service options remained broken as of 11:30 Tuesday morning. 

Christopher Allen is a PBN staff writer. You may contact him at Allen@PBN.com. Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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