Southwest Says Operations Back to 'Normal' after Flight Cancellations Left Passengers Stranded

Dec. 30—After days of canceled flights, leaving thousands of passengers stranded and separated from their luggage, Southwest Airlines appeared to return to mostly normal operations on Friday.

The airline announced Thursday that it expected to "return to normal operations with minimal disruptions" on Friday. As of 9:30 a.m. Friday, no Southwest flights were canceled at Oakland or San Jose airports, and only two were canceled at San Francisco International Airport, according to FlightAware. Seven Southwest flights were delayed in San Francisco, 14 in Oakland and 13 in San Jose.

Across the nation, Southwest passengers reported relatively empty flights Friday, some with one person to a row, as the carrier reshuffled routes and sent planes, and crews, to where they needed to be.

Sean Sturtevant, a 26-year-old San Francisco resident, arrived in Oakland from Seattle on Friday morning and said his flight was far from full.

"I had a whole row to myself, it was pretty empty," he said. "It was really nice."

Sturtevant was among the dozens of passengers arriving to Oakland International Airport relieved that they had no flight delays or cancellations. But that relief also came with anxiety.

Anayeli Nunez, a 26-year-old Berkeley graduate student, said she woke up at 3 a.m. Friday worried that her 6 a.m. flight from El Paso, Texas, to Oakland would be canceled. But it wasn't, and Nunez, with her 2-year-old, half-Persian cat, Fritz, boarded without problems.

"It was kind of a miracle," Nunez said.

Bob Jordan, Southwest CEO, said on "Good Morning America" on Friday that the unprecedented winter storm impacted the airline due to its severity and that "a lot of lessons will be learned" to make sure "this never happens again."

"The storm had an impact but we had impacts beyond the storm," Jordan said. "It really was the scope of the problems attempting to be solved just to move crews around, keep the airline moving. We have great tools... but this is something we really had never seen in our 51 years."

Jordan said the airline would be making investments in "operational areas" and plans to reimburse passengers for rental cars, hotel rooms, meals and if they booked flights on other airlines.

"There is no greater focus beyond safety than taking care of our customers," Jordan said. "Our desire is to go above and beyond."

Federal regulators have vowed a rigorous review of what happened at Southwest, with all eyes on outdated crew-scheduling technology that left flight crews out of place after the storm hit, essentially shutting down almost all of the carrier's operations.

The Department of Transportation is investigating the cancellations. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said this week that the airline could face tens of thousands of dollars per violation in penalties if they "fail to take care of passengers."

Just on Thursday, Southwest was still operating at about one third of its normal schedule with more than 2,300 flights canceled. Thousands of passengers were stranded throughout the country, with some driving back to the Bay Area from places as far as Texas. Thousands of people are still waiting to be reunited with their luggage.

That includes 69-year-old Margo Hammell, who was at the Oakland airport Friday in hopes of finding her suitcase. Hammell was supposed to fly out of St. Louis on Christmas Day, but her flight was canceled. She and her husband stayed the night in the airport and were only able to fly to San Diego on Tuesday. They returned to the East Bay by Amtrak on Wednesday morning.

Hammell said she and her husband planned to file for refunds for their flights, newly booked tickets, hotels and meals — after organizing all of their receipts from the past few days.

"We're just trying to stay calm and roll with it," Hammell said, waiting patiently as an airport employee searched rows of bags that had been alphabetized by last name.

The rows were significantly smaller than earlier in the week. An airport employee said people had been coming "all day, around the clock" to pick up their bags.

The airline previously said the winter storm caused catastrophic problems for its computer systems and disrupted schedules for its fleet and crews.

"This has impacted so many people, so many customers over the holidays," Jordan said. "It's impacted our employees. And I'm extremely sorry for that. There's just no way almost to apologize enough, because we love our customers, we love our people and we really impacted their plans."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Sarah Ravani (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @SarRavani

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