Southwest Airlines announced Tuesday that they will cancel 1,500 flights per day starting on Friday, March 27.
The move was made to offset a large decrease in passengers due to the coronavirus pandemic and comes just days after the airline announced that they would cancel 1,000 flights per day. That policy was announced last Friday and went into place on Sunday.
The flight cancellations will stay in effect until at least April 14.
Southwest is focusing the cancellations on locations that have multiple flights or alternate ways of getting to the destination. They are also trying to make sure this affects the fewest number of customers possible.
If your flight is canceled due to this, Southwest will contact you and they will give you the following options:
- If your flight is 60 days or more away, you will be allowed to rebook it online at southwest.com/rebook.
- If you don't want to rebook at this time, the money you spent on the flight will be saved using your confirmation number, so you can use it on a future flight. Those funds will be good until June 30, 2021.
Southwest also announced last Friday that they would no longer fly internationally starting this past Sunday. They hope to begin international flights again starting May 4.
Southwest also announced today that they are suspending all in-flight food and drink services to limit interactions between employees and passengers. Passengers are still able to ask for an unopened can of water. This will go into effect Wednesday.
