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Southwest Airlines Cancels More Than 60 Percent Of Its Flights Today; Tacoma Power Substations Vandalized; 1,400 Customers Impacted. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 26, 2022 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[15:00:55]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: It's the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Pamela Brown.

And we begin the hour with a travel nightmare. Thousands of flights have been canceled or delayed across the country today. The hardest hit, Southwest Airlines which has scrapped more than 60 percent of its flights. Take a look here. These are some of the long lines of Southwest passengers in Raleigh, Atlanta and Denver airports.

In a statement to CNN, Southwest Airlines said it is "experiencing disruptions across our network as a result of the winter storm's lingering effects on the totality of our operation."

CNN is Carlos Suarez is at Atlanta's airport. Carlos, you're on the southwest side of the terminal, what are you seeing? What are you hearing from passengers?

CARLOS SUAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, I'm hearing a great deal of frustration from a good number of passengers who are stranded and are flying Southwest Airlines or at least they were hoping to today. The airport here in Atlanta has seen well over 200 canceled flights and a majority of those flights have come from Southwest Airlines.

The airline has canceled 64 percent of its flights out of Atlanta. This line here behind me are passengers that are on board one of these canceled flights. We're going to take a bit of a walk so you can get a sense of just how long this line is. We're just on the other side of the terminal, where as you can imagine people have been waiting for hours to see if they're going to be able to get booked on another flight.

The line, it goes all the way down the Southwest Airlines' terminal. It wraps up to the other side and just about everyone that we've talked to out here has been in this line for anywhere between two to three hours. Now when we're talking about the overall number of canceled flights across the U.S. where you can imagine that number at this hour is in the thousands with thousands more flights being delayed. Now we caught up with one passenger who made this line here for this Southwest Airlines flight. She had some pretty harsh words for that airline and here's what she told us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANOMAY MALATHID, FRUSTRATED SOUTHWEST PASSENGER: I have a lot - lots of thoughts, maybe not camera appropriate. We've been sitting in line for hours. Canceled flight yesterday. I felt like we've been let on. So we know that there are some staffing issues from storm Elliott, we get that, the ripple effect.

But then when you're trying to rebook, when you call the like - they asked you to call, it hangs up on you. You call again. It has that dial tone, like the number doesn't exist. And then you call again, you get through and you're on the hold for three to four hours. I did that last night, this morning. This is just - it's just ridiculous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SUAREZ: And you can kind of tell just how long these passengers have been in line if you take a look at their cell phones, because a lot of them are on hold and so when you look down at their phones, you can see just how long they've been waiting for someone to pick up their call.

Again, this line goes all the way around to the other side. These folks not quite sure when they're going to get out. Some of the folks that we talked to earlier today told us that the earliest the airline was telling them might be Thursday, Pamela?

BROWN: Oh, my goodness. Not only did they have to pack their bags, they had to pack their patients. That line, wow, Carlos Suarez, thank you so much.

Well, let's bring in Lyn Montgomery, she is the President of TWU Local 556, which represents Southwest Airlines flight attendants. The airline as we said has canceled more than 60 percent of its flights today. Lynn, what can you tell us about this?

LYN MONTGOMERY, PRESIDENT, TWU LOCAL 556, REPRESENTING SOUTHWEST AIRLINES FLIGHT ATTENDANTS: Well, I was just listening to the customer, Southwest Airlines customer that you were speaking with. And I'm so sorry that that is happening to her. The same thing is happening to Southwest Airlines flight attendants and flight crews. The phone systems that the company uses is just not working. They're just not manned with enough manpower in order to give the scheduling changes to flight attendants and that's created a ripple effect that is creating chaos throughout the nation.

BROWN: Right. Because it also seems like the issue is not just the winter storm, right? It seems like there's a bigger issue with staffing. I mean, a plane can take off without staff, right?

[15:05:02] MONTGOMERY: This is not a staffing issue. This is a systems issue. Southwest Airlines was staffed. Its employees were ready to go to work. But when they chose to take flights into the middle of the storm or not preemptively cancel enough flights, their systems have not been able to keep up with the rescheduling, the cancellations, the notification to crew members about those cancellations and changes in flights.

We've had flight attendants on hold for up to 12, 17 hours in some cases and unable to get hotel rooms. They've been sleeping in airports. And we've also had issues with being booked - rebooking. There were some issues with the rebooking systems. This is a systems failure led by the executive leadership of Southwest Airlines and it's time they make it right.

BROWN: And how do they make it right, exactly?

MONTGOMERY: Well, Bob Jordan today - yesterday actually, sent a message to all employees talking about the systems, modernizing the systems and needing to do that. We need more than just talking about that. We need to see an action plan of what Southwest Airlines is going to do to make sure that it can operate under irregular operations during inclement weather, storms, hurricanes or they should make better decisions when choosing to cancel flights.

We all hate to cancel flights. Nobody wants to cancel a flight. We all need to get where we need to go. But if you cannot handle it and the result is that thousands of people, including customers and crew are going to be waiting hours and hours on end to find out what to do, then you should cancel preemptively.

BROWN: And you mentioned Bob Jordan, he is the CEO of Southwest Airlines. Lyn Montgomery, thank you for coming on and sharing the flight - not only what the passengers are going through, but the flight attendants themselves, the crew, thank you.

And we did reach out to Southwest Airlines for an interview, the airline company has been responding to customers on Twitter and Southwest says it is trying to re-accommodate as many customers as possible whose itineraries have been disrupted.

All right. So let's bring in Kathleen Bangs. She is a spokesperson for flight tracking company FlightAware. She is also a former commercial airline pilot and training instructor. Okay. So let's dive into this here. How widespread are the delays for Southwest, just how bad is this?

KATHLEEN BANGS, SPOKESPERSON, FLIGHTAWARE: Well, it's unfortunate for Southwest because they are leading the delays and mostly those cancellations and they have been all week. We don't want to pick on Southwest. They're one of my favorite carriers. They have such great leeway for people that use their tickets. They give you up to 10 minutes before departure to cancel.

One of the issues with them though is they are more of a short haul carrier, short and medium range. So that means they have a lot of what we call turnaround times. In other words, on a given day, on average, their jets are making more flights because they're shorter.

So those turnaround times really bog things down. You're not making any money. You're not efficient when you're on the ground and that has helped to slow them down, unfortunately, just because of the route structure that they have.

BROWN: So does that explain the full picture of why Southwest Airlines has been disproportionately impacted? Because look, all the airlines are having to deal with the storm, right? But clearly things are worse at Southwest.

BANGS: That's right. It's also hit a lot of their bases and a lot of where they have a lot of activity on the West Coast, Denver, that sort of thing. But again, as more of a short to medium haul carrier, that means there's - they have the shorter flights. It's these turnaround times that are - they're really hurting the airlines and with staffing.

Trying to get people to the airport in this storm system that we've had, people calling in sick because they are sick, people are calling in sick, let's be honest, sometimes because it's the holidays and also because of the brutal working conditions.

When you're an hourly employee out on that ramp getting maybe $17 an hour, few benefits because a lot of the ramp workers don't work for airlines, they actually work for third party contractors. It's tough in these conditions when it's below zero windshield to be out there swinging bags and that sort of thing. It also slows everything down.

So I know they're kind of in the line of fire right now, but they have great customer service. They're trying their best but I think all the carriers will once again be reviewing their battle plans after we get through this holiday season.

BROWN: I think that's a good way to look at it. In the meantime, though, the weather as Southwest itself noted, it's getting better and it said that basically it assumes that everything is going to get back on track shortly. When do you think that's going to happen? I mean, these poor people who as we heard from Carlos they're being told you may not be able to fly out until Thursday.

BANGS: That's the issue as all the flights are booked and when they tried to book people onto Christmas Eve and Christmas Day flights because normally those are light days just like New Year's Eve and New Year's Day's flight.

[15:10:00]

Unfortunately, they just didn't have the capacity for it. So we do have some good weather coming out on the West Coast. I'm in Washington State right now. We're going to have horrible weather later today. It's going to hit a lot of the West Coast. But for the rest of the country, the weather is mostly going to be improving. We're going to see much, much warmer temperatures across like Denver, up maybe even 50 degrees. That's going to help de-snarl things in the system. But the - part of the issue has been the customer service and people can't wait. We see them on social media, people waiting five, six, eight hours to try to talk to someone. So I do think the airlines, once again, they were so well-prepared at Thanksgiving, the weather was great, everything went well.

The storm of this magnitude is something. If we look back to last February 3rd, that was the record holder for cancellations in 2023. Well, we've now surpassed that, 23 percent of all flights were canceled last Thursday. We've had more cancellations today than yesterday. So yes, I think everybody is going to be looking at how can we improve this.

But again, it's tough when you get these really, really intense weather systems that don't just affect the airlines. We want to keep things running safely. Let's remember safety is paramount, but it's also hard for those ground workers to not only get to work but also to do their job.

BROWN: Yes. I think that's a really, really important point. As you said, they work for third party contractors, so there's a lot of different factors at play. Kathleen Bangs, thank you for giving us the whole picture. We appreciate it.

Well, this monster winter storm has now killed at least 47 people nationwide and it snow and freezing conditions have also forced a major government response. Southern cities are opening warming centers. In Jackson, Mississippi residents must boil its water after the cold likely damaged its system.

But nowhere is the storm devastation felt more than the Buffalo area, referred to as ground zero by officials. More than half of these weather-related deaths occurred there. And rescuers who are already - have already experienced epic snowfall they had to be rescued themselves. The local sheriff expects the death toll will rise now that the winds have eased and deemed whiteout conditions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF JOHN GARCIA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK: As a first responder and sheriff of Erie County, it's gut wrenching to have a situation where you're unable to respond to emergency calls, medical calls. We had zero visibility which was compounded by the amount of snow. It was the worst I've ever seen.

When you have 420 EMS calls that are unanswered, it's just gut wrenching.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: CNN's Polo Sandoval is Buffalo. Polo, New York's governor called the storm today the blizzard of the century. She said the weather dangers are far from over.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. We rode it out, sheltered the whole thing, Pamela, and we can tell you that's absolutely true. And you know what, in terms of just the heartbreak that we've seen here, we heard from Buffalo's mayor, Byron Brown, earlier this afternoon and just describing just the tragic and heartbreaking nature of the job and the duty that the officers are carrying out here in Buffalo, and that's going door to door or one stranded car to another.

And in some cases, finding people who sadly did not survive that death total right now of storm related deaths right now, rather, at 25 and there is concerning on the ground that that number will continue to rise. So as they focus on any potential rescues, they're also focusing on keeping the streets clear.

However, they're not just doing it across the board. It is a very sort of calculated approach here from city officials. These plow trucks, they're focusing on the streets that lead in and out of some of the medical facilities, for example, some of the main thoroughfares, some of the main arteries as well to allow firefighters and other personnel to actually get to any potential calls.

But as you're about to hear from one of the officials that we've heard from here recently, basically stressing that point that that driving ban, it's still in place, unless it's an emergency or essential, there should be no cars on these streets.

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MAYOR BYRON BROWN (D) BUFFALO, NY: We are asking people to stay off the roads. The Buffalo Police have literally in a variety of different ways, provided hundreds of rescues, and have rescued many stranded motorists in the city of Buffalo. In some of these circumstances, some of these people might not have survived.

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SANDOVAL: It's Mayor Byron Brown. Let's talk power outages quickly. Yesterday, roughly 25,000 households in the Buffalo area were in the dark as of the last hour and a half or so. About half of those are back online, so there is some progress here, now we just need that snow to stop.

BROWN: That is a good point. Polo Sandoval, thank you so much.

Joining me now is Erie County, New York Executive, Mark Poloncarz. Mark, I know how busy you have been. In your morning briefing, you said that 25 people have died from this blizzard. Has that number risen?

[15:15:01]

MARK POLONCARZ, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK EXECUTIVE: At this time we have confirmed through Erie County Department of Health Medical Examiner's Office 25 deaths. We are expecting more as the medical examiner confirms the cases after the bodies are brought in the hospital.

So we, unfortunately, we do expect that that number will rise. Last night, we had 13 deaths. I had announced the additional 12 for the county and as we're going around, now that the weather is finally allowing us to get out there and check into cars, and to check into homes that we've not heard people from for some time, we unfortunately expect to find more bodies. It was just a horrible situation, the worst storm I've ever seen and now we're starting to see the death toll rise.

BROWN: It's just awful.

And the Governor described this snowstorm as unprecedented. Give us your perspective on this. How has it tested you all in new ways? I mean, you're used to snow up there, but not like this.

POLONCARZ: Yes. It wasn't that long ago we had a little over seven feet of snow that fell in the south towns of Erie County just south of the city of Buffalo and we were reopened after two days. We can handle snow, but this was a true blizzard in which you had not only heavy snows constantly, but whiteout conditions and extreme winds, hurricane force winds of over 75 miles an hour that continued for hours on end.

It's the first time any of us can remember situations where we felt truly helpless. We were trying to send equipment and personnel out at the height of the storm, but they were getting stuck. And then we had to send specialized rescue crews out to rescue the rescuers.

I lived through the blizzard of '77, I was nine years old back then. That is always considered the worst storm in Buffalo history. And unfortunately, we now have more deaths that occurred in the blizzard of '77 and it just was a storm that I hope no one ever has to go through elsewhere.

BROWN: Yes, going down the history books in all the wrong ways. There have been stories that we should note of joy to come out of these dire conditions. Tell us about a pregnant woman your team's came across.

POLONCARZ: Well, there's been a lot of incredible stories of bravery and sacrifice by many, but there was a pregnant woman who was - who went to one of the - one of our best hospitals, but her condition was such that she needed to go to the children's and women's hospital, Oishei Children's Hospital.

So our team of partners in the public works with high (inaudible) were able to dig a path from the one hospital to the other so that she could be taken to Oishei Women and Children's Hospital thankfully everything appears to be good for mom and baby. The birth was successful. And it's just an example of one of the great stories and otherwise very difficult situation.

BROWN: That is amazing. Wow. What a story that is. Thank you to all the rescue workers who helped with that and just have gone above and beyond over the holiday weekend and today to help rescue people. Mark Poloncarz, thank you.

Well, a fourth power substation is vandalized in Washington State leaving thousands without power on Christmas. What investigators have uncovered next.

And migrants gathered at the border are facing frigid temperatures and seeking shelter from the severe weather. We are live in El Paso, Texas just ahead.

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[15:22:37]

BROWN: Well, power was knocked out for 14,000 customers in Tacoma, Washington on Christmas day after attacks on local energy substations. Officials say the suspects vandalized power equipment at three stations and caused a fire at the fourth location.

CNN's Josh Campbell joins us now. So Josh, these attacks follow other incidents of vandalism at power hubs in southern Washington and Oregon last month. What more do we know about this.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Pamela. This a serious. We've been talking about these widespread power outages across the country due to inclement weather, but authorities here in Washington State believe that this massive power outage in Tacoma just south of Seattle on Christmas Day was intentional, believing that these four power substations were vandalized. As you mentioned, that leading to 14,000 people without power.

Now, at this hour, police continue to investigate they have not made any arrests. They haven't indicated what the potential motive is. But they did speak to give us an update about what they found when they arrived at the scenes as well as how this investigation is proceeding. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SGT. DARREN MOSS, JR., PIERCE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT: The suspects cut one of the locks on the fence area, made their way inside and causes damage to the substation which ultimately knocked out power for a large amount of residents in the county.

All three happened in the middle of the night on Christmas Day causing power outages. Nothing was stolen from either or any of those facilities. So there's a good possibility they are related. We are aware of other incidents that occurred in Oregon and southern Washington as well as the incidents from North Carolina or earlier this winter time. So that's what we're looking into.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: Now to your critical point, Pamela, the sergeant there mentioning these other incidents that they are reviewing. Of course, we know in Washington State last month there were two other attacks against these substations. And as we've been reporting extensively in North Carolina last month, thousands of people were left for days without power after a suspect or group of suspects shot up to substations.

Authorities there in Washington State say they're working to determine if there's any type of connectivity there. This comes, of course, as we've been reporting that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have been warning that violent domestic extremists have urged their followers to conduct these exact type of incidents going so far as to write online about how their supporters can go after the so called soft targets.

Very serious situation there in Washington State. Of course, the - as we mentioned, investigators continue to look into that to determine if that is - any correlation to these other incidents we've been reporting on for the last couple of months, Pamela.

[15:25:04]

BROWN: All right. Josh Campbell, thanks so much.

Here to discuss, CNN National Security Analyst, Juliette Kayyem. So, Juliette, first off on the heels of Josh's report, my question is, look, the arrest haven't been made there in Washington for whoever was responsible for this, same in North Carolina.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Right.

BROWN: Tell us about the challenges in investigating these incidents and how law enforcement investigates them.

KAYYEM: Well, one of the challenges is, of course, is just when they're happening at night, under sort of sabotage, people are coming in and out, they're not - they don't have to really enter the facilities, they can be on the outside, at least what we saw in North Carolina. So there's sort of like sort of drive bys or fly bys in the sense that these are happening very quickly and not a lot of critical infrastructure is protected in the ways that we may want it to be.

And there's a lot of people making a lot of noise about doing this. So it's not like there's one person saying we're going to go after these facilities. This is now part of a concerted effort on - in particular, right wing extremist groups to look or go after critical infrastructure.

I'm just looking at the data from the Tacoma area. You're not - you don't have four incidents like that happening randomly or coincidentally, that this clearly a sort of a concerted effort and the fact that it was on Christmas Day when there would be the least amount of help possible as we know, it certainly looks like a targeted attack.

BROWN: Right. So just quickly, though, I mean, given the national security implications here, how can it be that it could just be a drive by, fly by situation as you put it that could wreak such havoc? It's kind of mind boggling.

KAYYEM: Yes, it is. I mean, part of it is our critical infrastructure was built at a time when we worried less about this kind of sabotage, intentional sabotage. We worried about climate change and other issues. And so a lot of these substations are not protected. You're driving by them (inaudible), right? I mean, they're just facility, so they'd be easy to identify, you can identify them either by passing by or any map. They're not hard to fortify in the sense that you could just use sandbags, higher fencing, other things to protect the facility that may be at risk. And we need to see that focus by the infrastructure facilities at the stage knowing that this kind of sabotage, easy to do, high probability and relatively in this stage, low consequence.

I mean, they're not going - what's important to remember, these are impacting the people who are harmed by it very, very deeply. I'm not minimizing that. But it's harder to go after what we would call the heartbeat facilities, because those are more fortified. These are impact - these kinds of attacks are impacting 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people at a time, not an entire city of 6 million people.

BROWN: That's important context. I mean, but it - but still, the repercussions could be wide ranging there. It could impact national security and I'm wondering like how does law enforcement distinguish between mere vandalism and ideological attacks, because I keep hearing the word vandalism, but you - also, by the same token, you heard Josh there reporting violent domestic extremists or are pushing others to do this, that police are saying those with ideological beliefs might be behind this, so how does this square?

KAYYEM: Yes. So that is - Josh is exactly right. That's - that is just - to be clear about this, that the attacks or the potential attacks on critical infrastructure are being promoted by the right wing. They see it as a way to show disruption to show power. They also view it as a way to start a race war.

So we know that, whether we know that is the reason for this particular attack that is unclear at this stage. So the authorities are keeping the language at sabotage, which just essentially means it's some vandalism that's organized across a series of critical infrastructure facilities. The motivation of the people we don't know yet.

So these two things are existing in parallel at this stage. We will find out soon enough whether they're linked, whether this is linked to a concerted attack in Washington. I'll tell you a December 25th attack that's hitting three or four substations is being done to make a statement. This is not like some guy goofing off. This is just based on my experience, so one can assume that there is some motivation behind it.

BROWN: All right. Juliette Kayyem, thank you for offering your perspective and expertise on this.

KAYYEM: Thank you.

BROWN: Well, South Korea fires warning shots after North Korean drones enter its airspace and Russia says several of its soldiers were killed after shooting down a Ukrainian drone. Those stories next.

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