U.S. Transportation Department Investigating Southwest Airlines

The main focus of the probe is to decide if Southwest executives engage in unrealistic scheduling of flights which is legally considered unfair and deceptive.

The U.S. Transportation Department announced that it is investigating the Southwest Airlines holiday travel chaos that occurred in December.

They will be looking into whether Southwest is scheduling more flights than they can handle. This airline is one of America’s biggest domestic carriers. Over 16 thousand flights were canceled between December 21st and 29th.

The estimated cost of the cancellations is between ‘$725 and $825 million’. nearly half of the estimated costs comes from lost ticket revenue that will be refunded to customers.

The main focus of the probe is to decide if Southwest executives engage in unrealistic scheduling of flights which is legally considered unfair and deceptive. The main reason behind the investigation is to confirm that consumers are protected.

Southwest is cooperating and shared that their holiday flight schedule was carefully designed and offered to customers with the backing of a set plan to operate it. The airline argued that the chaos occurred after the major winter storm caused cancelations which threw off the schedule system.