Blaming a nationwide outage affecting most domestic air travel, executives at Southwest Airlines on Monday afternoon took the nearly unprecedented step of canceling nearly all the airline's remaining flights out of San Diego for the day.
The local disruption is also affecting all of the inbound flights as well, Southwest officials said, with those flights canceled, too.
Travel Woes
Flight tracking tools were showing cancellations and delays continue on Tuesday and even Wednesday.
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
“We are looking at two to three or even four days to get everyone rebooked,” a Southwest representative told some travelers at Terminal 1 after asking them where they were headed.
Southwest Airlines apologized Monday for operational challenges at San Diego International Airport and other airports nationwide due to an intense winter storm, promising it is working to recover.
"With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable," Southwest said in a news release Monday. "We are working with safety at the forefront to urgently address wide- scale disruption by re-balancing the airline and repositioning crews and our fleet, ultimately to best serve all who plan to travel with us. And our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning."
Southwest canceled more than 2,700 flights Monday, close to two-thirds or around 70% of its scheduled total, according to the tracking website FlightAware. Comparatively, Delta canceled 9% of its flights and United canceled 5% of its flights.
The airline said it was fully staffed late last week and prepared for the approaching Christmas weekend when severe weather swept across the continent.
"This forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity," Southwest said. "This safety-first work is intentional, ongoing, and necessary to return to normal reliability, one that minimizes last-minute inconveniences."
Southwest admitted anticipating "additional challenges with an already reduced level of flights as we approach the coming New Year's holiday travel period, and we are working to reach out to customers whose travel plans will change with specific information and their available options."
The airline plans to operate at about one-third of their normal schedule in the next few days, Chris Perry with Southwest Airlines announced Monday night.
"This will help us to reposition flight crews who are out of position," Perry added.
Southwest added its employees and crews "are showing up in every single way. We are beyond grateful for that. Our shared goal is to take care of every single customer with the hospitality and heart for which we are known. On the other side of this, we will work to make things right for those we have let down, including our employees."
A spokesperson with the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) responded to Southwest's delays and cancelations Monday evening:
“USDOT is concerned by Southwest Airlines’ disproportionate and unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays as well as the failure to properly support customers experiencing a cancellation or delay. As more information becomes available the Department will closely examine whether cancellations were controllable and whether Southwest is complying with its customer service plan as well as all other pertinent DOT rules.”
The City News Service contributed to this report — Ed.
