Spirit Airlines to cut up to half of its flights Friday; frustration mounts for those stuck at LAX
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Spirit Airlines is expected to cancel up to half of its scheduled flights on Friday, as frustration mounts for the carrier's customers who are stranded at Los Angeles International Airport.
Friday marked the sixth consecutive day that Spirit has canceled hundreds of flights nationwide. As of 4 a.m., flights to 12 of the airline's destinations from LAX had already been axed.
Among those stranded at the airport was Robert Moubray of Lansing, Michigan, who was traveling with his wife and young son. Moubray said their flight had been canceled three times.
Asked what he had been told by Spirit, Moubray replied: "They haven't told us much so far. They're trying to get us a flight out of here and they still haven't got us anything so far.
"They tried splitting us up about 20 minutes ago, saying, 'We can get you guys split up, we might be able to get you back to O'Hare or Detroit.' But no word, nothing yet."
A spokesperson for the carrier said the mass cancellations were caused by a "perfect storm" of unfavorable weather conditions, staffing shortages and information technology issues. The spokesperson added that the cancellations were necessary to give the company some "breathing room" to ensure crews and planes can get to the right locations.
On Thursday, 400 of Spirit's flights were canceled across the U.S.
"There will still be cancellations over the next few days, but we can start to begin to build back to a full operation and then build from the takeaways that we get from this last week," Spirit CEO Ted Christie said.
The disruptions are just the latest examples of airlines scrambling to deal with an increase in travel this summer. Airlines have thousands fewer employees than they did before the pandemic, but U.S. air travel has recovered to about 80% of 2019 levels.
Customers who called Spirit this week complained about being put on hold for hours. Airlines received $54 billion in taxpayer money to keep people employed through the pandemic but reduced staff anyway. Now they are adding call center workers and filling other jobs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
