Holiday travel: Southwest Airlines cancels hundreds, delays thousands of flights

For millions of people traveling over the holiday, this year was much better than last. Christmas morning put a bow on a relatively smooth weekend.

Only 157 flights within, into or out of the U.S. had been canceled and 2,111 were delayed as of late afternoon on Monday, according to the tracking website FlightAware.

For this holiday season, U.S. airlines prepared for massive waves of travelers by hiring thousands of pilots, flight attendants and other workers — in an effort to avoid the delays and cancellations that marred travel in 2022, culminating with the Southwest Airlines debacle that stranded more than 2 million people.

Still, Southwest experienced hiccups again over the weekend that the airline was looking to clear by Monday. Just 2% of the airline’s flights were canceled Monday, though 16% were delayed, which is 693 flights total, according to FlightAware.

On Saturday and Sunday, Southwest canceled 426 flights and delayed 2,689 flights, FlightAware data showed.

A Southwest spokesperson blamed the issues on dense fog in Chicago on Saturday and Sunday that prevented planes from landing and said some additional cancellations may be necessary Monday ahead of what was expected to be a full recovery on Tuesday.

Auto club AAA predicted that between Saturday and New Year’s Day, 115 million people in the U.S. would travel at least 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home by air or car. That’s up 2% from last year.

More than 2.6 million people were screened by the Transportation Security Administration on Thursday, according to TSA records. Data from the weekend is yet to be released.

Over Thanksgiving, a record number of people traveled through U.S. airports, topping pre-COVID numbers in 2019 with a single-day record of 2.9 million people screened by TSA on Sunday,…