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Nearly 90 Percent Of All Flight Cancellations Today Are Southwest Flights; Zelenskyy Aide: Maternity Ward Hit By Russian Shelling In Kherson. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 27, 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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[15:00:58]

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: Thank you so much for joining me again. It's the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Sara Sidner in for Victor Blackwell.

We begin this hour with an air travel meltdown and it isn't all the weather's fault, let's be clear. More than 3,000 flights across the U.S. grounded again today. Almost all of them, nearly 90 percent are on Southwest Airlines. Southwest passengers from Raleigh to Denver to Atlanta are all lining up at ticket counters and looking for answers. The airline now apologizing for the fiasco, but many customers are completely fed up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm traveling with my senior citizen parents for our Christmas vacation and they don't have any of their diabetes, heart condition medication. I have an autoimmune disorder. I don't have my medication.

And then all of our essential toiletries, makeup, hair products, clothing, we have nothing. We brought no carry-ons.

I don't know that I'll travel Southwest again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've seen a lot of families who are sleeping on the floor and it just breaks my heart.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If my boss is watching this, yes, it's true. I didn't just blow off the day. I'm actually standing in the airport doing nothing. And I do have a ticket and I hope to come to work at some point in my life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: I love that he have some levity there. With New Year's Eve just days away, nearly 2,500 Southwest flights have already been canceled for tomorrow. President Biden even weighed in a short time ago and said airlines will need to be held accountable.

In a company-wide message obtained by CNN, Southwest executives addressed the meltdown saying, "We've talked a little bit over the last year about the need to modernize the operation and invest. This is why. We can't be our size and scope and have a lack of tools."

We'll more on the failures that they outlined in just a bit. But first, let's get to CNN's Adrienne Broaddus who is at Chicago's Midway Airport. Adrienne, I mean, I don't even need to ask you how things are looking because I can see the madness behind you. How's it going?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And you can only imagine, Sara, how people feel. It's the people, the travelers who are impacted the most. This really illustrates what we've seen here at Chicago Midway, bags, luggage as far as the eye can see. And folks who had canceled flights are unable to grab their bags.

We just heard the announcement over the loud PA confirming what a supervisor told us earlier this morning, if your flight was canceled, and Midway is not your final destination, the crews here will not be pulling any luggage. And we spoke with one traveler who has been a loyal Southwest customer, he says he's beyond frustrated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAMI NASHASHIBI, LOYAL SOUTHWEST FLYER FRUSTRATED BY LUGGAGE TROUBLES: No one knows what to say. Even the poor agents sitting behind counters have quietly admitted that this is absolutely insane. Absolutely, it clearly seems like Southwest has lost their ability to control the situation and there may need to be some type of federal intervention to help them rectify what has caused I'm sure millions of dollars of damage to families that otherwise have been depending on these days just to get some type of R&R.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROADDUS: And Sara, we've seen tears throughout the morning and afternoon. Tears of happiness, you hear this family right here celebrating. They just were able to get your bags, I heard a celebratory ...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. We drove from Dallas to get our bags.

BROADDUS: You drove here to Midway from Dallas?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we did. We've driven all night.

BROADDUS: Fourteen hours. How long did you wait in line to get your bag?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Probably about an hour and a half.

BROADDUS: And now where are you going?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To the hotel, we're going to go sleep.

BROADDUS: Enjoy your rest because you need it right now, I can imagine. And they're walking away with their bags. But that hasn't been the case for everyone, Sara, back to you. SIDNER: Thank you so much, Adrienne Broaddus, for bringing us all of that. It is heartfelt. People are dealing with it in many different ways. But there is a lot of sorrow that people couldn't make it to see their families.

[15:05:04]

Let's bring in Mary Schiavo. She's a CNN Transportation Analyst and a former Inspector General for the Department of Transportation. Mary, Southwest's COO said in the message that went to employees and I'm going to read it here for you: "The extreme cold weather made us limit the amount of time our Ground Operations staff were exposed. We started to see equipment freeze and as a result, we had to modify our network, sometimes shutting down Crew base operations, we found ourselves with Crew at a place where we're not able to re-Crew the network. We had aircraft that were available, but the process of matching up those Crew Members with the aircraft could not be handled by the technology" that they currently have. That's a lot. What is your take on all of that?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: That's a lot of gobbledygook for saying that we really do not have cutting edge and adequate technology to run the huge national and now international operations that used to be a stellar Southwest back when it was formed. Its pride point was that it had the youngest fleet, the most modern equipment, the most modern aircraft, and consistently won awards for what we call the Triple Crown of Aviation, best customer reported satisfaction, on time performance and safety records and newest planes.

How far Southwest has fallen, that statement is quite an understatement. But airlines have been through this before. It makes you wonder if they don't recall any storms in the past, there was a huge weather meltdown back in 1999 in Detroit. That airline had to pay millions of dollars in its passengers who sued because of that.

But ordinarily what happens is they get fined by the government and the fines go to the government, not the people afflicted. So usually airlines can skate by and say, oh, what's the weather. We didn't know it's going to get cold in the United States, shockingly.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you, we've just gotten this in - senators Blumenthal and Markey, Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal are both - they wrote a letter saying, hey, Southwest has got to start compensating people for all of this hassle. Isn't there already a Passenger Bill of Rights in place that requires that?

SCHIAVO: Oh, what a great point. Well, there's a Passenger Bill of Rights and Congress talked about this and did some things, but it's very specific. For example, it depends upon the hours you're stuck on the tarmac, it depend - it gives things like the right to have a refund.

Well, if you're stranded in an airport, a refund isn't going to help you. Oh, by the way, they don't have to make it right on the spot. And for airlines that don't have a lot of contracts and alliances with other airlines, they can't rebook you on other airlines, so you're very much stranded, if you're not on the mainline carrier that can - could shuttle you off to another carrier.

So Congress and the Senate actually bears some responsibility for this because the American public believe them when they said there was going to be passengers' Bill of Rights and you would have rights in these situations. Rights mean rebooking and a cash payment and the law doesn't give you the second, so - or the first.

The airline is allowed to walk away and just issue you a refund on your credit card or in X number of days if they blame it on whether. They always blame it on whether but in this case, it's modernization. Modernization that they failed to do.

SIDNER: What needs to happen and I suspect with Southwest isn't the only one. What needs to happen to stop something like this from happening again?

SCHIAVO: Well, one of the most basic things and several of the - many hundreds of people caught in this situation right now say that there are no customer service agents. They call customer service agents, the number, and they're literally placed on hold or they get in line for the automatic callback queue and there's no callback.

So what has happened, they have moved to the do it yourself travel system, which is usually great, because you rather do it yourself. But then when something happens, there's no backup. There's no one there and then, of course, now what do they blame it on? Then you saw the Southwest release, they say COVID, the flu and another virus and it's making a lot of people out sick.

But the fact of the matter is, we've gone so much to computerization that when those systems fail, there is no backup. And so just having someone to help them would have gone a long way. I think what's going to happen here is Congress will have hearings, they'll promise more rights and laws but they don't ever materialize because the airlines are so powerful.

Overall, what has to happen? Reregulation. It is abysmal. What we have allowed to happen to the United States aviation system, abysmal.

SIDNER: Points that I'm sure that many, many hundreds, even thousands of passengers can agree with. Mary Schiavo, Thank you so much. And one thing that I did hear you say is, oh, we still need humans. I like that. Appreciate you.

SCHIAVO: Right. Thank you.

[15:10:00]

SIDNER: Thousands of Southwest customers were stranded and missed their holiday celebrations. Tim Hurd was one of them and he joins us now. Tim, I think the story is that you had a flight booked from Philadelphia to Las Vegas. Tell us what happened.

TIM HURD, FLIGHT ON SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CANCELLED: Well, we've actually had two flights booked and both have been canceled now. We were going to spend Christmas with my wife's family out west and we've been looking forward to it for a long, long time, tried to move our flight up to avoid flying through Chicago. We were trying to go through Nashville to avoid the worst of the weather and that flight ended up getting canceled. They re-booked us for today and then canceled that flight as well.

SIDNER: Did they tell you why? Do they give you an explanation? Because sometimes a big frustration is people hear weather and they're like, wait a minute, Las Vegas is fine, Nashville is fine, what is it really, what did they tell you it was?

HURD: They haven't really given clear answers on that. We see that connecting flights have been a big issue when the plane doesn't get to Philadelphia, then it can't continue on to Nashville and then Las Vegas or what have you. But the really - the one of the hardest things was how much trouble we had getting a hold of anyone at Southwest.

We tallied it up and it was like 13 hours of hold time over the weekend.

SIDNER: Thirteen hours of hold time?

HURD: Yes. About three and a half hours to get somebody actually on the phone each time.

SIDNER: Wow. All right. Let me ask you this, I think you still have a flight book, right, to Las Vegas, what is it going to take? If you could have a conversation with the leadership of Southwest, what would it take to make this whole and make you still want to fly Southwest in the future?

HURD: Yes. We do currently have a flight for Sunday, but that means that we'll only have two or three days with our family that we hoped to have - took vacations to actually have some good quality time with my kids spending their first Christmas with their grandparents and cousins. Yes, that would have been a memory that we can't get back. Like I don't know what to say.

I saw the CEO of Southwest say that it's been a tough couple days. But I mean, that's an understatement, honestly.

SIDNER: Yes, you can't get back the experience and there's no money that can compensate for that. But have you lost money beyond what you've paid for the tickets? Have you had to take work days off to try and to get where you need to go?

HURD: Yes. I took this week a vacation off work and some time next week to be able to extend our time. So it's going to impact us for a while. But we booked on points. We've been loyal Southwest customers for a long, long time and so all we're going to get back is the taxes and fees on the points that we booked (inaudible) on.

SIDNER: Maybe there will be something more, I just - what are you doing now? You're just - are you just going to take that flight, you think, on Sunday if it takes off?

HURD: We'll have to wait and see if things are canceled. We - actually we didn't want to deal with connecting flights, so we booked it out of Baltimore. So we have a two hour drive to make that flight. If they canceled it at the last minute then we're really hung out to dry.

SIDNER: All right. Tim Hurd, I want you to keep in touch with us because we want to find out if that flight finally takes off and I'm sorry for all your trouble. Thank you so much for coming on and say hi to the family and Merry Christmas.

HURD: Okay. Merry Christmas.

SIDNER: At least 52 people have died from the extreme snow that's gripping much of the nation. More than half of those killed 28 were in the Buffalo area. Some people there had no power since Friday in freezing temperatures. And as rescuers tried to help those still stranded, some of them got stuck themselves.

People are taking advantage though of the disaster officials say. Social media video captured folks breaking in and stealing from, it looks like, a store there that you're watching that happen from Buffalo. This is footage of a 7/11.

Joining me now is Brian Nowak, a councilmember of the town of Cheektowaga, New York. Councilmember, what's your biggest concern today, as the snow starts to ease off a bit?

BRIAN NOWAK, COUNCILMEMBER, CHEEKTOWAGA, NY: It's basically snow removal at this point. Thanks for having me on. We have a lot of neighborhoods in our town that gotten a single pass where you can get an emergency equipment through, an ambulance, a fire engine, police cars, but there's a lot of work to do to make sure that we finish clearing those roads because there's still possibilities for them to get stuck.

SIDNER: We know that as things warm up, if they warm up fast enough, there will be some flooding, has that started to happen at all and are you concerned about the possibility of flooding after this kind of weather disaster?

NOWAK: Absolutely I'm concerned about the flooding, because if you can't dig curb to curb in all these neighborhoods and you've got a lot of cars parked on the roads, it will be very difficult for that.

[15:15:04]

You're not going to be able to totally mitigate those situations and we're making really good progress in some of the neighborhoods. We brought a lot of independent contractors in, but with the temperature's rising we're up against Mother Nature at this point, once again.

SIDNER: Can you let me know what you're hearing from folks there in your neck of the woods right now? How they're doing, whether they have their lights on, for example, their electricity, have you heard from your constituents?

NOWAK: As of midday today, we had about 200 to 230 folks without electricity. There were thousands at some point, it's a town of around 80,000 to 90,000 people and most power has been restored. We still have some people without.

And absolutely I've heard from constituents and today it's a lot about whether they're going to come plow the road and clear the road and you have a town of 80,000 to 90,000 people, so there's all - there are a lot of streets. We got our mains cleared. We got some of our secondary cleared, but there's a lot more work to do on that front.

SIDNER: So you said some of the main roads are clear or all of the main roads are clear and now your secondary roads are - you're trying to clear as we speak.

NOWAK: Right.

SIDNER: Thank you so much for joining us and giving us an update on what's happening there and good luck as this temperature does start to improve. Brian, we will - we'll check back with you soon.

As migrants at the border wait for the Supreme Court decision on Title 42, Border Patrol agents in El Paso say they're encountering around 1,500 people every single day. We're live in Texas next.

And concerns are mounting for Miami Dolphins quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa, I knew I would mess that up, I'm sorry, Tua, after he is put back in the NFL's concussion protocol once again. I'll speak to a retired NFL player about it just ahead.

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[15:21:12]

SIDNER: This just in to CNN, an aide to Ukrainian president, Zelenskyy, says a hospital's maternity ward was just hit by Russian shelling in the eastern city of Kherson. He tells CNN that bullets and explosions erupted in the exact place where two babies were born today. Five women are inpatient in the ward and miraculously no one was injured.

This is not the first time, of course, that the Russians have taken aim at a maternity hospital. And it serves as just another example of Putin shifted focus to civilian targets as his army continues to lose ground in Ukraine.

Now to a decision from the Supreme Court on the Trump era immigration policy known as Title 42. That could come today. That's the Trump era border restrictions set in place at the onset of the pandemic that allows authorities to turn away migrants at the border for public health concerns.

Right now, officials say there are 22,000 people waiting on the Mexico side of the southern border. The National Guard has installed more than two miles of fencing in the El Paso area and officials in El Paso continue to encounter upwards of 1,500 migrants every day.

CNN's Rosa Flores is in El Paso. Rosa, what are you seeing at this hour? We've been watching this for the past few days. There is certainly a crisis happening here. What is going on behind you?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are so many mixed emotions here, but let me show you around as I tell you about it. There are individuals here in El Paso who just stopped by, these are residents who stop by and drop off food, water. There's also organizations that drop off food and water for migrants. That's what you're seeing around me here.

I mean, these are dozens, if not hundreds of migrants who are braving the cold in the early hours. And then throughout the day as the temperatures go up, they shed some layers. And then if you look closely, you'll see that there are blankets all over this area, because at night, they wrap themselves in blankets and choose a section of the sidewalk and that is where they sleep.

Now Sara, there's a mixture of individuals here. Some of them were tired of waiting in Mexico because Title 42 was taking too long. And they just decided to turn themselves into authorities, others decided to enter illegally. And so there's a mix, there's a lot of need, there is hunger, a lot of them are cold at night and they're hoping that eventually they can meet up with family and find work in the United States. Sara.

SIDNER: I know that some of the local politicians there I've spoken and I'm sure you have as well with some of the councilmembers who are frustrated because they feel like they're not getting the help they need from the federal government. We have also learned this that Texas governor, Greg Abbott, confirmed that he was behind the Christmas Eve buses of migrants that were dropped off at the Vice President's house in 14 degree weather. What more do we know about that?

FLORES: The Governor's office not only confirming that it was a Texas bus that dropped off those migrants at the VP's residence, but doubling down and pointing the finger back at the White House saying that the White House is full of hypocrites. Let me read a quote from the director of communications for Gov. Greg Abbott's press office.

She says, "Instead of the hypocritical complaints about Texas providing much-needed relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities, President Biden and Border Czar Harris need to step up and do their jobs to secure the border - something they continue failing to do."

[15:25:03]

Now, Sara, as you know, the Biden administration disputes that saying that the border indeed is secure. But one thing is clear, if you look around me, there's definitely hundreds of people here that somehow made their way through the border, entered the country, some of them are documented, others are undocumented. Sara?

SIDNER: It is clear that the border is not completely secure because of the inundated - inundation of human beings there. I hope as we go out throughout the weeks that things get warmer there, because I know it's been dangerous temperatures for those who have made it over the border, whether legally or illegally. Rosa Flores, thank you so much for your reporting throughout.

President Biden is about to head to St. Croix for vacation, but the $1.7 trillion government spending bill still hasn't reached his desk for his signature. We're live from the White House.

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