Washington state Sen. Maria Cantwell and others on the transportation committee questioned Southwest leaders Thursday during a hearing about the airline’s late-December mass flight cancellation that left a reported 2 million passengers stranded.
Southwest canceled nearly 17,000 flights from December 21 to 31, initially blaming the cascading failures on storms sweeping most of the country. At Thursday’s hearing, leaders from the airline and the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association pointed fingers at an internal scheduling software that assigns staff to planes.“These pilots that came here on their day off can attest to the chaos when they come to work,” Captain Casey Murray, president of the SAPA, said Thursday.
Cantwell, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, issued a statement, pledging an examination of whether more consumer protections were needed. One woman from Seattle, Hope Grandon, was stranded with her boyfriend in Denver for four days and couldn’t rebook on Christmas. Two days ahead of the senate hearing, Grandon told Cantwell during a Zoom call with impacted Washingtonians.
“Coach Bethea and his wife contacted Southwest; they were basically told, you’re on your own.” Cantwell then directed a request at the Southwest Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Watterson, “Coach Bethea and his wife, recently they wanted to ask one question, Mr. Watterson; they wanted me to ask you, and they know you’re a busy guy, they wanted to ask you to call them.”
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