‘Kind of a mess.’ Travelers stranded at KCI as Southwest cancels hundreds of flights
After a hectic holiday visiting family in Kansas City, Cynthia Hart was excited to get back home to Washington, D.C.
But like thousands of Southwest passengers in Kansas City and across the country, Hart arrived at the airport and learned her flight Tuesday had been canceled. The airline said it would run about one-third of scheduled flights for the next few days to recover from operational challenges it has faced since Thursday’s winter storm.
As of around 4 p.m., Tuesday, Southwest had canceled 81 flights, or 73% of its scheduled flights, going into or out of Kansas City International Airport, according to data on Flight Aware. The airline so far has also canceled 82 flights Wednesday and 50 flights Thursday traveling into or out of KCI, or 74% and 61% of its scheduled flights for those days, respectively.
Between Christmas Day and Thursday, the airline has canceled 336 flights going into and out of Kansas City so far, according to data from Flight Aware.
Attendants helped Hart schedule a flight for January 1st, but in the meantime, she didn’t know what she’d do. She had nowhere to stay and no car. Few food options outside of a Starbucks, vending machines and grab and go options were available early in the morning in the terminal and being diabetic, she worried she’d need to throw away her insulin pen if she couldn’t find a way to refrigerate it.
“I couldn’t wait to go back to D.C., and now this,” she said. “I will never come back to Kansas City in my life.”
Hart was eventually put in touch with Joe McBride, a Kansas City Aviation Department spokesman, who helped her get through to Southwest management due to her medical concerns. The airline said it would help Hart find a flight home on Wednesday.
In a statement released Monday, Southwest apologized for challenges impacting customers and employees. The airline said it is working to fix the issue by repositioning crew members and fleets.
“We were fully staffed and prepared for the approaching holiday weekend when the severe weather swept across the continent, where Southwest is the largest carrier in 23 of the top 25 travel markets in the U.S.,” the airline wrote. “These operational conditions forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Monday night that it would investigate the cancellations and whether or not Southwest acted in line with its customer service policy.
“USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service,” the department tweeted. “The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”
In terms of food options at KCI’s Southwest terminal, McBride said it could be hard for customers to access some of the other open restaurants because of the terminals’ decentralized design, meaning food is limited and spread out. That issue should be fixed when the new terminal opens, he said.
The airport’s current concessionaire, HMS Host, has also struggled with staffing since it laid workers off during the pandemic and closed several stores in the terminals, he said.
After Grace and Jacob Morse’s flight from Omaha to Oakland was canceled Tuesday, they waited three hours in line at the airport to find another way to visit Grace’s grandmother in the hospital. Attendants at the Southwest terminal in Omaha said they wouldn’t be able to fly out from that airport until at least New Year’s Eve.
So they asked for the next flight out of a nearby airport and made the two and a half hour drive to KCI, where they hoped the wait would be worth it. They checked in and made their way through security, but the flight has since been delayed.
“It’s just kind of a mess right now,” Grace Morse said. “Everyone has been kind, but there’s only so much they can do.”
At baggage claim, workers sorted hundreds of checked bags, many of which arrived at the airport without their owners whose flights were canceled. Brian Cahill and his wife were able to pick up their family’s seven bags after driving through the night to get home.
The couple and their four kids had vacationed in Ecuador and begun their trek back to Kansas City, hoping to arrive by Christmas. But after two canceled flights -- first from Atlanta to Kansas City and then from Atlanta to St. Louis with plans to drive back to Kansas City -- Cahill’s family of six spent Christmas sharing a hotel room in Atlanta.
The next day, Cahill said they were able to get the last rental car from Hertz and drove 13 hours back to Kansas City, getting home around 2:30 a.m. He and his wife were up a few hours later to get their luggage from the airport.
“We’re running on fumes like tons of other people,” Cahill said.
Car rental services at airports in Kansas City and across the country struggled to meet the needs of travelers whose flights had been canceled.
A national representative for Enterprise, Alamo and National said they’ve received lots of calls from customers asking for extensions on their rentals or to change the drop-off location of their vehicles, allowing them to drive it home when their flights were canceled.
Both options can lead to hefty added fees for customers.
“We are running out of vehicles,” the representative said. “We’re receiving a lot of calls regarding the situation.”
Hotels around the airport also said they were receiving more calls from people who needed a place to stay. Most still had openings available for stranded passengers.
This story was originally published December 27, 2022 at 4:57 PM.
