Biden vows to hold airlines accountable for widespread cancellations
Thousands of flights were canceled during the holidays following a winter storm
Southwest Airlines warns of additional delays, cancellations amid post-holiday debacle
Fox News contributor Jonathan Hoenig and Aptus Capital Advisors portfolio manager David Wagner discuss ongoing flight cancellations, airline markets and market predictions for 2023.
President Biden says his administration will hold airlines accountable for the high number of flight cancelations across the nation in recent days after a winter storm wreaked havoc on holiday travel.
"Thousands of flights nationwide have been canceled around the holidays," Biden tweeted Tuesday. "Our Administration is working to ensure airlines are held accountable."
US President Joe Biden delivers a Christmas address from the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington, DC, on December 22, 2022. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The president then instructed anyone impacted by flight cancelations to visit the U.S. Department of Transportation's Airline Customer Service Dashboard to see if they might be entitled to compensation.
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Biden's message followed a Monday tweet from USDOT targeting Southwest Airlines, which experienced far greater operational disruptions than any other U.S. carrier.
A Southwest Airlines airplane taxies from a gate at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on October 11, 2021 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images / Getty Images)
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LUV | SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO. | 32.36 | +0.41 | +1.27% |
The department vowed to "closely examine whether cancellations were controllable and whether Southwest is complying with its customer service plan, as well as all other pertinent DOT rules."
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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also said Monday that he was tracking the situation with Southwest "closely" and would "have more to say" on the issue Tuesday.
A powerful winter storm that brought blizzard conditions to several states just before Christmas caused widespread flight disruptions and cancelations over the weekend, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at airports across the country.
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Southwest was impacted far worse that other airlines with more than 12,000 cancelations since Friday. While other carriers appeared to have largely recovered from the disruptions by Tuesday, Southwest was still reeling.
Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan during an interview in New York, U.S., on Friday, Sept. 24, 2021. (Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
After Southwest canceled over 70% of its flights Monday, CEO Bob Jordan told The Wall Street Journal customers could expect "another tough day" Tuesday.
The airline said in an earlier update that it would be operating on roughly one third of its schedule "for the next several days" as it regroups.
As of around 1 p.m. Eastern Time Tuesday, more than 3,100 flights in total were canceled within, into, or out of the U.S. for the day according to flight tracking site FlightAware. Most of those cancelations were from Southwest, which scrapped 2,571, or 63% of its flights.
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A Southwest spokesperson told FOX Business it would post another update to its website on Tuesday.