Southwest canceled 300 flights on Friday, July 22

Southwest Airlines canceled at least 300 additional flights Friday, July 22, as the airline continued to deal with lingering disruptions following its systemwide technology breakdown Wednesday, July 20. The cancellations were primarily the result of displaced flight crews, Southwest said.

“Our technology systems have been fully restored and we continue to focus on getting customers and their baggage to their destinations safely,” Southwest said in a statement.

“Because this a network problem , it becomes very complicated,” Southwest senior director of network operations control Steve West said in an interview posted on Southwest’s Facebook page July 22. “This is the highest level of disruption that we’ve seen in many years.”

“Today is actually the first day we were in more of a recovery plan. What we’re doing today … is we’re making sure that if we’re doing any schedule adjustment, such as cancellations, that we’re doing it well in advance. … the majority of our cancellations today are in advance,” West said. “What we’re doing is to try and reset the network, and that is a complicated piece that we have to do. It takes … two to three days to totally get there, and each day we’re making progress,” West said.

“We have about 650 lines of flight, so you take the flight attendants and pilots, who aren’t matched up, we have to marry them together, so if they’re out of sequence for some reason, we have to find a way to marry them,” West said. “And once you do that, you disrupt something. So we have to ask the pilots and the flight attendants to do extra flying which they’re doing, thanks to them, and we’re making this airline move.”

Southwest has extended customer rebooking through Tuesday, July 26. Customers have two weeks from their original date of departure to rebook travel at the original fare, at no additional cost, Southwest said.

“Our employees in airports, online, and on the phone are assisting a significant number of customers and hold times are much longer than average. In the midst of peak summertime travel, we recognize many flights through this weekend were already close to full,” Southwest said. “As cancellations continue, we recommend customers who have flexibility explore rebooking on alternate dates beyond Sunday by checking availability [on Southwest’s website].”

Southwest has not announced additional cancellations for Saturday or Sunday, July 23-24.

ATWOnline