Southwest Equities (LUV) fell 6% on Tuesday after the airline canceled thousands of flights, leaving passengers stranded at airports and drawing the attention of federal authorities.
Southwest had canceled more than 2,590 flights Tuesday as of 2:30 p.m. ET, or about 63% of its scheduled flights, according to tracker FlightAware.
The disruption exacerbates a slump that began over the holiday weekend and saw 2,900 flights canceled on Monday.
The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) said late Monday that it would investigate whether the disproportionate share of flights canceled by Southwest Airlines was within the company’s control.
A winter storm this weekend caused a wave of airline cancellationsbut the southwest has been hit particularly hard as flight challenges extend past the holiday weekend.
“The USDOT is concerned about Southwest Airlines’ disproportionate and unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays as well as the failure to properly support customers experiencing cancellations or delays,” the department said in a statement. tweet monday night.
The cancellations also angered President Joe Biden, who said in a Tweeter specifically referring to Southwest’s disruption that his administration was working to ensure airlines were “held accountable.”
By comparison, United (LAU) canceled only 72 flights on Tuesday, Delta (LAD) cut 34 flights and American Airlines (AAL) and JetBlue (JBLU) each canceled 25 flights, according to data from FlightAware.
Southwest plans to tap about a third of its program over the next few days to help get back to business, a spokesperson told Yahoo Finance.
“We were full and prepared for the approaching holiday weekend when severe weather swept across the continent,” Southwest said in a statement. “These operational conditions have forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and scale that still have the tools our teams use to restore the airline to full capacity.”
In one interview with the Wall Street Journal on Mondaygeneral manager Bob Jordan said it was the “largest-scale event” he had ever seen.
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Alexandra Semenova is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alexandraandnyc
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