As Southwest Airlines tries to return to normal, some flight cancellations persist.

Southwest Airlines canceled quite a few hundred flights on Monday as it worked to solve the challenges that led it to strike extra than a quarter of its scheduled flights in excess of the weekend.

Over 1,800 Southwest flights were canceled on Saturday and Sunday, accounting for more than 28 p.c of its weekend schedule, according to FlightAware, a tracking support. By late afternoon on Monday, Southwest experienced canceled about 10 p.c of the flights scheduled for the working day, just more than 360 flights. About a 3rd of its flights ended up delayed 15 minutes or more.

Southwest blamed the cancellations on quite a few results in, together with problems with the weather conditions and air site visitors manage on Friday and an incapacity to get flight crews and planes to wherever they ended up needed.

Cancellations on Friday, primarily prompted by serious temperature, prevented planes and crews from staying the place they desired to be on Saturday, a cascading dilemma that led to cancellations and delays through the weekend and into Monday, the airline reported.

“We hope to restore our comprehensive program as quickly as possible,” Southwest claimed in a statement. “To each and every shopper that knowledgeable a cancellation or hold off, Southwest gives our sincerest regret about disrupted vacation plans.” The airline’s share rate fell a lot more than 4 p.c Monday.

The airline and the union that signifies its pilots took pains throughout the weekend and on Monday to say that the disruption was not brought about by protests more than the airline’s recently declared vaccination mandate, denying an notion, fueled by some early information studies, that had gained traction on line amongst conservatives and anti-vaccination activists. Conservative lawmakers pointed to Southwest’s cancellations as evidence that vaccine requirements could harm the economic system.

“Joe Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate at work!” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, reported Sunday night on Twitter. “Suddenly, we’re shorter on pilots & air targeted visitors controllers.” Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, echoed all those remarks on Monday.

The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged that flights have been delayed or canceled on Friday simply because of serious climate, army teaching exercises and a brief staffing lack at one particular air site visitors manage middle, but explained that the disruption lasted only a few several hours.

“Some airlines continue on to encounter scheduling difficulties due to plane and crews being out of place,” the company mentioned in a statement above the weekend.

Casey Murray, the president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, dismissed the idea that pilots experienced referred to as in unwell to protest the company’s vaccine mandate, although the union has asked a court docket to avoid Southwest from implementing that need. Pilots called in ill at a normal rate this weekend, he stated.

As an alternative, Mr. Murray said, the popular cancellations were being caused by technological issues and complications with how pilots are reassigned and rerouted all through disruptions, a method intricate by Southwest’s uniquely significant, point-to-issue network. In a common working day, about 10 {ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} of pilots are reassigned from the flights they were scheduled to function. That determine was 71 {ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} on Saturday and 85 p.c on Sunday, in accordance to Mr. Murray.

“That is unsustainable,” he claimed. “The domino outcome carries on, and what we see, because of to some inside failures, is it’s happening so quite a few periods that they just just can’t go every person.”

The airline experienced a related string of cancellations in June, which its incoming chief executive, Robert Jordan, recently blamed partly on overly rosy assumptions about how conveniently the airline could meet up with surging summer season desire following the doldrums of the pandemic.

“I consider we could have been less optimistic about how quickly we could get people back again off of go away and qualified and all that,” Mr. Jordan stated at a September meeting hosted by Cowen, an investment bank.

1000’s of workforce volunteered for buyouts, early retirement or very long-term go away all through the pandemic. And the airline has had to convey on new staff members to change those people departed employees to meet up with the need, Mr. Jordan added.

“I’ve been at the airline for 33 a long time,” he explained. “Constraints have usually been, can you get plane, can you get airports, facilities, gates? This is the to start with time wherever the constraint is team.”

The union also said in a statement on Sunday that its customers are barred by federal regulation from using a strike to take care of a labor dispute without having exhausting other alternatives 1st.

Although the union, which says it does not oppose vaccination, denied that its associates had been contacting in ill to protest the mandate, it did ask a choose on Friday to quit the airline from enacting the vaccine mandate and other policies. The request is element of a broader lawsuit that predates the mandate and facilities on the union’s assertion that Southwest has taken a selection of “unilateral actions” in violation of labor law.

Southwest is not alone in seeing pushback from workers over a vaccine mandate. Final 7 days, hundreds of American Airlines’ personnel and their supporters protested its new mandate outside the company’s Fort Truly worth headquarters, in accordance to The Dallas Early morning News.

But quite a few others have voiced guidance for such specifications. United Airlines, the first big U.S. airline to impose a mandate, has reported practically all of its 67,000 staff members were being vaccinated, with the exception of about 2,000 who applied for religious or health-related exemptions. United explained it anticipated to have to hearth much less than 250 personnel for failing to comply. The airline’s executives experienced envisioned some blowback but have been amazed by the beneficial reaction, noting that it had received several additional applicants for open flight attendant positions than it employed to in advance of the pandemic.

“I did not respect the depth of aid for a vaccine mandate that existed, simply because you hear that loud anti-vax voice a large amount much more than you hear the persons that want it,” United’s main govt, Scott Kirby, explained to The New York Instances this thirty day period. “But there are much more of them. And they’re just as rigorous.”

Delta Air Lines has not imposed a vaccination prerequisite, but it said it would cost unvaccinated personnel $200 additional a month for wellbeing insurance policy.