CHARLOTTE — Southwest Airlines canceled nearly 2,000 cancellations over the weekend, causing a ripple effect of delays and travel issues across the country.
[LINK: FlightAware flight tracker]
Channel 9′s Genevieve Curtis spoke with one family whose Southwest flight at Charlotte Douglas International Airport was canceled just as they were about to board.
The family said they were waiting at their gate with their baby, ready to return home to Baltimore when their flight was canceled five minutes before boarding.
Without any more flights for the night, the family said the airline didn’t offer accommodations to stranded passengers.
“He was cranky,” mother Maruga Patel said of her son. “I didn’t have his meals, nothing.”
The family ended up staying with friends who live about 40 miles away.
“And they’re not willing to give any hotels, nothing,” Patel said.
They went back to the airport on Monday to try to catch another flight. Southwest blamed air traffic control problems and disruptive weather along with staffing issues in Florida for the wave of cancellations.
There has been speculation about a pilot walkout after Southwest issued a vaccine mandate for employees last week, but the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said that’s not the case.
Customers told Channel 9 that whatever the reason is, they’re frustrated with how it was handled.
“It’s just sad they don’t have anything controlled,” Maruga Patel said. “I told them, ‘Look, you need to tell the passengers what to do.’ Nobody is willing to help. They’re just booking people randomly. I said, ‘You can’t separate us.’”
(WATCH: American Airlines says it will cancel flights at Charlotte Douglas to ease strain)
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