![]() Southwest meltdown may cost the airline up to $825 millionĪmong the union’s evidence is a message sent during the meltdown to a cockpit computer from the airline’s dispatchers asking what crew is onboard the plane. More than 15,000 flights have been canceled by Southwest since winter weather began impacting air travel on December 22. Thanks for donating today.A traveler searches for a suitcase in a baggage holding area for Southwest Airlines at Denver International Airport on Decemin Denver, Colorado. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on and KUT.org. If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. So it’ll be an interesting case study for American, for Southwest, for other airlines going forward, and if the big talk from those that are opposed to vaccines – if they’ll stick up to it when they’re their jobs are on the line. And when their jobs are on the line, they went ahead and they got the vaccine. So, you know, if you look at a company like them that does have big bases here in Texas and Houston, employees were forced to do it. They said that 99% of people had either gotten a vaccine or that they had applied for a religious or a medical exemption. The really interesting one to look at is United, who kind of did this on their own months ago their deadline was a few weeks ago. Delta is the only one that hasn’t done it, but they have some penalties in terms of health insurance. What’s the state of vaccine mandates for the industry as a whole?Īmerican did it about a week and a half ago. Southwest hasn’t been the only carrier that’s announced vaccine requirements for its pilots. They’ve just kind of ignored it up to this point. Airlines are federally regulated even though they operate here. It’s a little unclear what the state can do. They’ve said they’ll follow the federal mandate. Southwest hasn’t even really responded to that. It’s hard not to see that as a shot at Southwest, American, the other airlines that have been under pressure to do this. What does this do, if anything, to Southwest’s policy? Greg Abbott issued an executive order banning all entities in Texas, including private businesses, from mandating vaccines. Ron Johnson, others, kind of perpetuating this theory that it was some kind of sick-out to protest these vaccine mandates. ![]() But you know, you have politicians like Ted Cruz, Donald Trump Jr., Sen. They’re trying to show their data on their sick calls to show that that’s not true. The company is saying that’s absolutely not true the pilots’ union is saying that’s not true. Over the weekend, as we started to see these delays and these cancellations, there was a lot of talk on social media that this was some kind of coordinated effort by a rogue group of pilots to shut down the airline, to say that they’ve had enough and that they won’t put up with this. But they’ve been adamant that they’re not anti-vaccine, that they’re pro-vaccine, but they just want to protect their pilots. They want some concessions from the companies, some securities. The union, they’ve filed a lawsuit to stop it. This goes back to last week when Southwest said that they would comply with the White House mandate for federal contractors, such as Southwest and other airlines, to have all their employees vaccinated. What are you hearing about that and what are workers saying? Some are speculating that Southwest’s difficulties may have resulted from “sick-out” – an informal strike protesting Southwest’s recently announced vaccine mandate. And Southwest, really, was the only one that saw anything unusual in terms of delays and cancellations. Everybody else is flying to Florida because of high demand in this pandemic period. But you’re right, American Airlines has a huge operation in Florida. Kyle Arnold: They were kind of blaming it on some factors in Florida, weather, some air traffic control slowdown, some military maneuvers near Jacksonville. Texas Standard: What was Southwest saying about these delays and cancellations that have caused such disruption over the past several days? They seem to have been the only domestic carrier really affected over the weekend. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the interview with Arnold in the player above or read the transcript below to learn more about how Southwest isn’t the only airline starting to require vaccinations among its employees. Kyle Arnold, aviation reporter for The Dallas Morning News, tells Texas Standard there’s no evidence of a pilot walkout that led to flight cancellations. Ted Cruz to claim that pilots weren’t showing up to work in protest of Southwest’s new vaccine mandate. The cancellations also led some public figures like Texas Sen. The Dallas-based carrier says a perfect storm of factors was to blame. Southwest Airlines was forced to cancel thousands of flights over the holiday weekend.
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