Regional airline cancels hundreds of flights affecting Delta, American, United

A regional airline carrier that operates flights for four major airline companies including American Airlines and Delta Air Lines canceled hundreds of flights on Thursday and Friday, USA Today reported.

“SkyWest experienced an internal technical issue, resulting in approximately 700 flight cancellations before the issue was resolved Thursday evening,” the company said in a statement to USA Today. “We apologize to customers for the inconvenience; we are working to minimize the impact on Friday’s schedule and to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.”

In a statement to The Hill, SkyWest Airlines said that more than 500 flights had been affected on Friday.

“While our servers were restored Thursday evening, we are still experiencing operational disruption as we work to get crew and aircraft into position, with approximately 500 flights cancelled Friday. We apologize to customers for the inconvenience and remain focused on efforts to return to normal operations as quickly as possible,” the statement said.

Alaska Airlines told The Hill that more than 100 of its flights had been impacted on Thursday and Friday, and that it was working on addressing the issue. 

American Airlines told The Hill that 230 flights had been affected for Thursday and Friday.

“We are working with customers directly to accommodate them to their destination as soon as possible and apologize for the inconvenience,” Delta Air Lines told The Hill in a statement that did not note how many flights had been impacted.

The St. George, Utah-based airline carrier says that it travels to more than 230 destinations and has a fleet of over 450 aircraft, according to its website. Since 2019, SkyWest has flown more than 43 million passengers. 

Earlier this month, Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights as it grappled with a staffing shortage, air traffic control issues and poor weather conditions. Overall, those cancellations cost the airline company $75 million.

The Hill has reached out to United for further comment.

—Updated at 5:51 p.m.