For the fifth day in a row, Spirit Airlines is canceling hundreds of flights, leaving travelers stranded across the United States.
The airline has canceled 400 flights for Thursday, roughly 51% of its schedule for the day, according to flight tracker FlightAware.
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Spirit has canceled more than 1,300 flights since Sunday as it deals with tech outages and staffing shortages. The airline said Wednesday that cancelations would ease in the coming days. Apparently, it meant after Thursday.
The airline issued a statement saying it will continue to work around to clock to get travelers 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," the statement said. "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."
The airline said it was implementing a "more thorough reboot of the network" which would allow it to reassign crews more efficiently and restore the network faster, which would bring down cancelations. As of Thursday, it doesn't appear that has happened.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Spirit canceled more than 400 flights per day, or 60% percent of its operation. The much larger American Airlines also canceled hundreds of flights, mainly due to weather. Operations at American Airlines have since stabilized, while Spirit continues to struggle.
The cancelations come as a slew of travelers return to the skies. The Transportation Security Administration reported screening a pandemic-era record number of individuals last weekend.
Travelers are urged to check their flight status before heading to the airport.
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