With airline staff at a breaking point, passengers can expect more headaches to come
By Chris Isidore, Gregory Wallace and Pete Muntean, The problems at Southwest Airlines run deeper than the operational meltdown that caused more than 2,000 flight cancellations in recent days. And they’ll continue well after the airline is back on schedule. Although this weekend’s problems were mainly limited to Southwest, it is by no means the only airline struggling to restore staff and flights that were trimmed during the pandemic. Fixing these problems will be expensive and time-consuming — and are likely to cause further pain for passengers returning to the skies. Southwest said a number of issues caused the weekend cancellations, including