Spirit Airlines cancels thousands of flights for fourth day in a row

By Amy Kawata

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    LINTHICUM, Maryland (WJZ) — Spirit Airlines passengers faced another day of cancellations Wednesday.

The carrier said it’s due to a wave of disruptions that started over the weekend. Passengers were left stranded across the country including at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.

“We all ran out of spirit for Spirit, I guess,” said Christian Spriggs. “When we got here, we thought we were going to be taking a flight and all of a sudden the flight gets canceled.”

“No one knows what’s going on and that’s what’s bothering everybody,” said Kollin McCullough.

The cancellations and delays at BWI have caused frustration among travelers.

Out of seven outgoing Spirit Airlines flights Wednesday, all were canceled except for two flights heading to Fort Lauderdale. Flightaware.com reports about 60 percent of the airlines’ flights were canceled.

Many passengers waited for hours at the ticket counter to speak with representatives scrambling to rebook flights.

“We have to stay tonight and our flight is in the morning now,” said Spriggs.

Spirit Airlines issued an apology in a statement, blaming the widespread cancellations on “overlapping operational challenges” including weather, system outages and staffing shortages:

“The last three days were extremely difficult for our Guests and Team Members, and for that we sincerely apologize. We continue to work around the clock to get our Guests where they need to be.

We’ve dealt with overlapping operational challenges including weather, system outages and staffing shortages that caused widespread irregularities in our operation and impacted crew scheduling. These issues were exacerbated by the fact that we are in peak summer travel season with very high industry load factors and more limited options for Guest re-accommodations.

After working through yesterday’s proactive cancellations, we’ve implemented a more thorough reboot of the network, allowing us to reassign our crews more efficiently and restore the network faster. As a result, cancellation numbers will progressively drop in the days to come.

By taking an in-depth look at the challenges we’re facing, we have identified opportunities for improvement that will help us operate a more resilient network and better serve our Guests.”

The airline is working to resume normal operations and “rebooting” its network. Spirit said cancellations will start dropping as early as Thursday.

Still, many passengers said they’re not taking any more chances moving forward.

“I don’t know what to do. Should we just go ahead and change it now or wait and get stuck in California?” said Jackson.

“Spirit, get it under control. Get it together guys,” said McCullough.

The airline carrier said they’re learning from disruption but until they are back on a normal schedule they are encouraging passengers to keep checking their flight status and keep an eye out for notifications before heading to the airport.

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