Southwest stock sinks as airline delays, cancellations continue

Southwest Airlines shares fell Tuesday after the airline canceled thousands of flights over the holiday travel weekend with more expected in the coming days.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
LUV	SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO.	33.00	+0.64	+1.98%

Winter Storm Elliott brought Christmas chaos, forcing Southwest to scrap more than 12,000 flights since Friday. Other airlines have also called off flights, though on a much smaller scale.

SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CRITICIZED BY PASSENGERS, TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT AS FLIGHTS DELAYED NATIONWIDE

The Department of Transportation expressed concern over the "unacceptable rate of [cancellations]." The department said it will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.

As of late Monday, Southwest continued to warn travelers to check their flight status per Twitter.

Flight tracking website FlightAware shows Southwest leads all airlines in cancellations, with over 2,500, or 62% of flights canceled at of 9:55 a.m. Another 139 flights, or 3%, were delays. 

American, Delta and United all had higher percentages of delayed flights, but lower cancellation rates. Those shares were mixed.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
DAL	DELTA AIR LINES INC.	63.41	-0.41	-0.64%
AAL	AMERICAN AIRLINES GROUP INC.	14.61	+0.09	+0.62%
UAL	UNITED AIRLINES HOLDINGS INC.	97.44	+0.61	+0.63%

Overall, more than 1,600 flights within, into or out of the U.S. saw delays. Over 4,600 were canceled.

In response to an inquiry about its operations, Southwest referred FOX Business to a media page which said the airline is working "with safety at the forefront to urgently address wide-scale disruption by rebalancing the airline and repositioning crews and our fleet."

The airline told Reuters it had decided to continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one third of its schedule "for the next several days."

Southwest earns most of its profits from flying domestically, and unlike other large U.S. carriers, it relies more on point-to-point service instead of operating out of large hubs. That leaves its staff vulnerable to being stranded in case of disruptions.

"We expect Southwest to call out the impact (from the storm) as it was worse than the industry and likely hurt earnings more than a 'normal' storm," Cowen analyst Helane Becker said in a note.

"The other airlines likely had manageable cancellations and delays, and actually appear to have recovered (in time to get everyone home)."

BREAKING WEATHER NEWS | FOX WEATHER HOME OF AMERICA'S WEATHER TEAM

The National Weather Service says increasingly stormy weather to impact the West Coast through Tuesday before spreading across the Rockies, while lingering lake-effect snows downwind from Great Lakes will become less intense and fade on Tuesday. Temperatures in the Midwest and East moderate this week.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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