Spirit Airlines has left thousands of Americans stranded at airports after thousands of flights were canceled during the week. The airline has canceled over 1,700 flights since Sunday, including almost 300 flights on Friday alone and 450 flights the day before. The Florida-based airline blamed “overlapping operational issues” for the cancellations of ultra-low-cost flights.
“We’re continuing with our way forward to fly as much as we can while also make progress on repairing our operation and repositioning our crews,” Spirit Airlines chief of communications Erik Hofmeyer told CNN Friday. “We still have work to do, but we are now in the position to see reductions in cancellations in the days to come.”
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The Spirit Airlines summer meltdown continues. Roughly 50% of Spirit’s flights have been canceled so far today. 61% of its flights were cancelled yesterday. Some people have been trapped, trying to get home since Sunday. pic.twitter.com/8Nh329jktl
— Sam Sweeney (@SweeneyABC) August 4, 2021
The airline’s issues began in late July, Spirit CEO Ted Christie told ABC News. He blamed weather issues and staffing shortages for the mass cancellations. “Weather delays and logistics delays throughout the air transportation system built throughout the course of the month and ate away at all the redundancy that we had in our system,” he explained. The canceled flights “were in the wrong places at the wrong time,” he said, adding that the company must “start to build that puzzle back together again. And, unfortunately, that takes our group a lot of time to do.”
Unfortunately for passengers, more cancellations are expected to continue next week. “We are starting to turn the tide here and get our operation back moving again,” Christie told ABC News. “There will still be cancellations over the next few days, but we can start to build back to a full operation.” The executive admitted it was a “terrible week for us, for our guests” and apologized to customers and employees who “are working really hard… it’s been a rough week for sure.” He also believes guests have been “taken care of” with new accommodations and vouchers for future flights.
Earlier today Spirit Airlines canceled hundreds of flights due to “a series of weather and operational challenges” leaving people stranded. This was the scene from Hartsfield Jackson this morning..pic.twitter.com/0RRNjEUiUH
— Everything Georgia (@GAFollowers) August 3, 2021
Spirit will have an uphill climb to get back on passengers’ good sides though as many complain about the cancellations that caused nightmares for summer travel. “I missed everything—everybody has been calling, saying, ‘where are you, what you are doing and you see what time I’m getting here, I missed everything,” Angelique Abrams, who was trying to get to a wedding in Ohio, told News5Clevealand. “I was supposed to be here yesterday, but they canceled my flight at the last minute, like hours beforehand, so that was a hassle. I had to be on the phone over two and half hours trying to get through.”
Brenda Delon told The Daily Mail she had to add an extra night to her family’s Puerto Rico vacation because of the airline. Her flight was canceled late Tuesday night and could not get hold of anyone in Spirit customer service. “[Spirit said] they will refund only half of what trip costs which is not an option since prices with other airlines skyrocketed. We have to wait it out,” Delon said.
