Southwest Flights Canceled, Delayed At LaGuardia Airport

ASTORIA, QUEENS (AP) — Southwest Airlines canceled several hundred more flights Monday, including some departing from and arriving at LaGuardia Airport, after a weekend of disruptions the airline blamed on bad weather and air traffic control issues.

Two flights heading to LGA, one from Dallas and another from Denver, were canceled on Monday, in addition to nearly a dozen flights into the airport that were delayed, records show.Those disruptions followed eight cancelled flights on Sunday, and another seven delayed trips.

More than 360 Southwest flights — 10 percent of the schedule for the day — were canceled Monday, and more than 800 others were delayed, according to the FlightAware tracking service.

The widespread disruptions began shortly after the pilots union asked a federal court on Friday to block the airline's order that all employees get vaccinated against COVID-19. The union said it doesn't oppose vaccination but it argued in its filing that Southwest must negotiate before taking such a step.

The union denied reports that pilots were conducting a sickout or slowdown to protest the vaccine mandate, saying it "has not authorized, and will not condone, any job action."

The pilots association offered another explanation: It said Southwest's operation "has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure" because of a lack of support from the company. The union complained about the "already strained relationship" between it and the company.

Airlines persuaded thousands of workers to take leaves of absence during the pandemic. Unions at Southwest and American have argued that management was too slow to bring pilots back, leaving them short-handed.

Alan Kasher, Southwest's executive vice president of daily operations, said the airline was staffed for the weekend but got tripped up by air-traffic control issues and bad weather in Florida and couldn't recover quickly. Because of cutbacks during the pandemic, he noted the airline has fewer flights to accommodate stranded passengers.

"The weekend challenges were not a result of Southwest employee demonstrations," said airline spokesman Chris Mainz.

The White House has pushed airlines to adopt vaccine mandates because they are federal contractors — they get paid by the Defense Department to operate flights, including those that carried Afghanistan refugees to the U.S. this summer.

» Reporting by David Koenig of The Associated Press. Read the complete report.