The “flightmare” continued Tuesday for thousands of Southwest Airlines passengers, including those stuck at Bay Area airports, as the carrier announced another massive round of cancellations.
More than 150 Southwest flights were canceled Tuesday at Mineta San Jose International Airport. There were another 127 cancellations at Oakland International Airport and 38 at San Francisco International Airport.
At SJC, the lines were much shorter Tuesday than the last two days, but it wasn’t because the problem cleared up. Passengers said they got the message that they weren’t going to be able to fly on Southwest.
“They were talking on the loudspeaker that some flights weren’t available until Dec. 31 to get out,” Debbie O’Grady of Phoenix said.
Not much information was released by the airline.
“When I called to confirm, the lines aren’t working,” Darryll Dixon of Houston said. “We’re gonna find out here in a few minutes as to where we are and where we stand.”
Many travelers went for plan B.
“Maybe we’re going to try to find a car, but it seems to be very difficult to get a car as well,” Cristophe Vielliard of Switzerland said.
Finding a car was indeed tough.
“We waited in the wrong line because I got an email from Hertz saying we had a car there, but apparently we have to come here,” Lucy Sotelo of San Jose said. “We got it through Payless but they want us to go through Budget. I think everyone is borrowing cars.”
Southwest is less centralized than the other airlines, so dominoes are falling all over the country. The airline did issue a statement saying, for the next few days, it’s only running a third of its normal schedule to reposition staff and planes.
“They have flights that go from anywhere to anywhere else, so that means their pilots, their flight attendants, their planes are all over the place,” Daniel Finkle from TripActions said.
Source: NBC Bay Area
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