Dec. 28—U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg issued a clear warning to Southwest Airlines' CEO on Tuesday, after an operational "meltdown" caused mass cancellations that left thousands of customers in the lurch across the U.S. The meltdown also crippled Southwest's operations out of Houston's Hobby Airport, with the company saying they won't be able to rebook any passengers through the Texas hub until Dec. 31.
"Their system really has completely melted down," Buttigieg said in Tuesday interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I made clear that our department will be holding them accountable for their responsibilities to customers, both to get them through this situation and to make sure that this can't happen again.
"From what I can tell, Southwest is unable to locate even where their own crews are, let alone their own passengers, let alone baggage," Buttigieg added, saying that he "conveyed to the CEO our expectation that they going to go above and beyond to take care of passengers and to address this."
The scale of Southwest's operational disaster is pretty remarkable: According to the website FlightAware, Southwest flights accounted for 2,691 of the 3,200 international, domestic and incoming international flights canceled for Tuesday, meaning that Southwest made up 84 percent of all canceled U.S. flights on Tuesday. Southwest canceled another 2,509 flights on Wednesday, or 64 percent of its flight, including 150 trips through Hobby.
Among fellow budget airline companies, Southwest was a clear outlier. The Arctic blast that blanketed Texas and much of the U.S. through Christmas drove competitors Alaska Airlines to cancel only 10 pe rcentof its flights and United Airlines to cancel just 3 percent.
Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan issued an apology video on the companies site on Tuesday directed at Southwest employees and passengers.
"I want everyone who's dealing with the problems we've been facing, whether you haven't been able to get to where you need to go, or you're one of our heroic employees caught up in a massive effort to stabilize the airline, to know that we're doing everything we can to return to a normal operation," Jordan said in the video. "And please also hear that I'm truly sorry."
Jordan stopped short of calling for big changes at the company in response to the meltdown, however, and seemed instead to express confidence in Southwest's existing operational models. "The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well, 99 percent of the time," he said in the video. "But clearly, we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what's happening right now."
Southwest spokesperson Jay McVay told customers they would be made whole during a Monday night news conference at Houston's Hobby Airport: "If you've already left, take care of yourself, do what you need to do for your family, keep your receipts," McVay said. "We will make sure they are taken care of, that is not a question."
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