With Southwest Airlines canceling 1,800 flights over the weekend -- about a thousand on Sunday alone -- and leaving passengers stranded across the US, many flyers are wondering if the pilots are engaging in a sick-out in protest of the airline's mandatory vaccine policy.
On Friday, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association asked a court to block the airline from requiring vaccination, in anticipation of the upcoming federal mandate.
The union’s court filing said Southwest’s vaccine decisions “unlawfully imposes new conditions of employment” that violate the labor protections for airline workers, Bloomberg reported, and on Saturday said the mandate has "aggravated a stressful environment for pilots caused by the problems with scheduling and staffing," per CNBC.
The company says the weekend flight cancelations are due to weather and "air traffic control issues." But the FAA denies that. And, if it were weather, the other airlines would have been affected.
But the aviation Website "One Mile At a Time" reports that the other major airlines are operating at near-capacity.
A release from the Southwest Pilots Association read, "SWA has claimed that the immediate causes of this weekend’s meltdown were staffing at Jacksonville Center and weather in the southeast U.S., but what was a minor temporary event for other carriers devastated Southwest Airlines because our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure.
"Our operation and our frontline employees have endured continuous and unending disruptions since the first time our airline made headlines in early June due to widespread IT failures. Our Pilots are tired and frustrated because our operation is running on empty due to a lack of support from the Company."
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