BEAUMONT, Texas — Travelers who counted on Southwest Airlines to get them home suffered through another wave of canceled flights Wednesday.
The airline cancelled around 2,500 flights, leaving thousands stranded across the country. The airline’s CEO said it could be next week before the flight schedule returns to normal.
One Southeast Texas man was affected by the Southwest Airlines chaos and turned to Jack Brook's Regional Airport in Beaumont for help.
"I had to rebook my flight because Southwest was having cancellations of some sorts so all the flights are booked until the first," said Beaumont Resident Benjamin Westbrook.
Westbrook drove to Jack Brooks Airport in hopes of getting a last minute flight on American Airlines to Las Vegas after his work trip through Southwest Airlines was cancelled Wednesday.
"Very frustrating, but my bosses are pretty flexible they understand, you know," Westbrook said.
The Dallas airline was undone by a combination of factors including an antiquated crew-scheduling system and a network design that allows cancellations in one region to cascade throughout the country rapidly.
This is a problem that Jack Brooks Regional Airport Director Alex Rupp says his airport can deal with since American Airlines works on a hub system.
"It's a very efficient way to move a large amount of people from hubs to hubs to hubs. It also helps to centralize from the airlines point of view it helps to centralize their aircraft or flight crews and all of their personnel at various locations," Rupp said.
Jack Brooks does have guidelines in place incase an emergency ever happens and while the staff was willing to help, they couldn't get Westbrook a connecting flight from Dallas to Las Vegas until January 1, 2023.
"Nobody really lives under a rock. Everybody still has their phones so they know what's going on, they know it's not no make-believe story, but they've been very flexible with me so everything's going to be okay," Westbrook said.
The federal government is now investigating what happened at Southwest, which carries more passengers within the United States than any other airline.
In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be “back on track before next week.”
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