Partisan Claims About Flight Cancellations Lack Evidence

2 years ago 231

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Southwest Airlines’ formation cancellations fueled partisan claims implicit the play that proscription workers were protesting COVID-19 vaccine requirements and causing the cancellations. But there’s nary grounds that workers staged protests. The Federal Aviation Administration, the hose and labour unions person each cited different reasons.

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Southwest Airlines cancelled much than 2,500 flights betwixt Friday, Oct. 8 and Tuesday, Oct. 12, the institution told america successful an email. Several factors led to the cancellations, which we’ll explicate below.

Over the weekend, though, societal media churned the company’s disarray into disapproval of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates, claiming the cancellations were owed to transportation-industry workers’ protests against the mandates. There is nary grounds that workers staged protests.

But, connected Oct. 9, a Twitter relationship that posts former President Donald Trump’s statements and different governmental contented shared a TikTok video recorded successful the Orlando International Airport. It added this claim: “BREAKING: Air Traffic Controllers In Jacksonville, FL Staged A Walkout Yesterday In Response To The Vaccine Mandate It’s Being Reported That All Flights In & Out Of FL Were Cancelled As A Result Mainstream Media Chose Not To Report On This As Of Yet.”

A time later, that tweet was featured successful a story on the blimpish website Gateway Pundit.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz made a similar claim on Twitter the aforesaid day, adding that determination was a shortage of pilots, too. “Joe Biden’s amerciable vaccine mandate astatine work! Suddenly, we’re abbreviated connected pilots & aerial postulation controllers. #ThanksJoe,” Cruz wrote, with a nexus to a CNBC story about Southwest’s problems.

On Monday, blimpish commentators Benny Johnson and Candace Owens posted a video of an hose aviator advocating against vaccine requirements. The video was viewed much than 2 cardinal times connected Twitter.

With it, Owens wrote: “FINALLY!! People are saying ENOUGH IS ENOUGH with these tyrannical mandates. I americium truthful arrogant of this brave, Southwest Airlines pilot— and ALL the pilots, formation attendants, nurses, and individuals that are choosing state implicit tyranny.”

But Shawn Walker, the aviator successful the video, doesn’t enactment for Southwest, the institution confirmed to america successful an email. Walker identified himself arsenic an American Airlines aviator connected his LinkedIn page, but American Airlines didn’t reply our question astir whether helium works there. The video was primitively posted to Walker’s TikTok relationship that promotes his CBD supplement website.

It’s besides worthy noting that obscurity successful the video did Walker accidental that helium was participating successful a work-related protest. Rather, helium plugged an enactment called US Freedom Flyers, which describes itself arsenic “a radical of proscription manufacture employees who person travel unneurotic to combat national and authorities mandates which purpose to portion Citizens of their close to aesculapian freedom.”

Fox News big Tucker Carlson besides highlighted the US Freedom Flyers, interviewing Joshua Yoder, who identified himself arsenic the group’s co-founder. Although Yoder advocated against the mandates, helium also told Carlson, “I volition ne'er beforehand a sick-out oregon enactment action, that is illegal.”

Airline employees are governed by the Railway Labor Act, which contempt its sanction has covered hose workers since 1936, according to a Congressional Research Service report. The labour instrumentality regulates corporate bargaining rights, including erstwhile workers tin strike, to forestall labour disputes that could interrupt railway and hose work and harm the economy, the CRS study said.

Carlson didn’t interrogation anyone who had participated successful the purported protests, but helium did claim that, to protestation the mandates, “this play … a ample fig of Southwest pilots called retired sick — they efficaciously unopen down their hose … astatine the aforesaid infinitesimal they decided to bash this, a ample radical of aerial postulation controllers seemingly reached the precise aforesaid conclusion.”

But we could find nary grounds for those claims.

So, What Caused the Cancellations?

Southwest Airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the unions representing Southwest’s pilots and aerial postulation controllers person each cited reasons different than vaccine-mandate protests for the cancellations.

That’s not to accidental that immoderate hose employees oregon aerial postulation controllers aren’t opposed to getting vaccinated against COVID-19. United Airlines, for example, is reportedly firing 232 of its astir 67,000 U.S. employees due to the fact that they person not complied with its vaccine requirement.

It’s besides imaginable that immoderate workers whitethorn person called successful sick to show their objection to the vaccine requirements. Southwest had announced connected Oct. 4 that each employees would person to comply with Biden’s executive order requiring national contractors to beryllium vaccinated against COVID-19. On Oct. 8, a time earlier the extended formation cancellations, the national that represents Southwest’s pilots sought to artifact the requirement, telling a national tribunal that the presumption hadn’t been decently negotiated.

But, if anyone did telephone successful sick, those workers don’t look to person caused Southwest’s problems.

Here’s however the problems unfolded, according to what is publically available:

On Saturday, Oct. 9, Southwest announced on Twitter that aerial postulation power issues and “disruptive weather” had caused cancellations.

On Oct. 10, the FAA said that “Flight delays & cancellations occurred for a fewer hours Friday PM owed to wide terrible weather, subject training, & constricted staffing successful 1 country of the Jacksonville en way center.”

The Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center is 1 of 20 aerial postulation power hubs crossed the state that support planes moving betwixt airports.

A section quality station reported on a missive citing an FAA official, saying the halfway had “some staffing issues” precocious connected Friday, Oct. 8, which were owed to “[n]ormal approved leave” and “[c]ontrollers who received either their archetypal oregon 2nd dose of the vaccine and by argumentation are required to enactment astatine location for (48) hours to self-monitor for broadside effects……thus creating immoderate staffing issues.”

We reached retired to the power halfway to corroborate that this was the case, and we were referred to the FAA, which did not respond to our requests for comment.

“We are alert that determination was upwind that affected operations astatine Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center connected Friday, a communal occurrence successful that facility’s airspace,” Doug Church, spokesperson for the aerial postulation controllers’ union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told america successful an email.

“We are unaware of thing other that whitethorn person caused delays,” helium said.

The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association weighed successful connected Oct. 10, saying successful a statement: “There are mendacious claims of occupation actions by Southwest Pilots presently gaining traction connected societal media and making their mode into mainstream news. I tin accidental with certainty that determination are nary enactment slowdowns oregon sickouts either related to the caller mandatory vaccine mandate oregon otherwise.”

Casey Murray, the national president, told the Dallas Morning News the pursuing day, “We person the information from this play and our sick rates were precisely successful enactment with wherever they were each summertime with the aforesaid benignant of operational disasters.”

Southwest’s main operating officer, Mike Van de Ven, besides said that the complaint of sick calls was normal. “There’s nary denotation successful immoderate of our information that determination is thing going connected nefariously with respect to immoderate benignant of enactment similar that,” Van de Ven told USA Today.

He besides explained that Florida is “a captious node successful our network,” with astir fractional of Southwest’s planes flying done the authorities each day.

“So erstwhile we person a disruption, a important disruption, successful Florida, it tends to dispersed to our full network,” Van de Ven reportedly said. “And that was the concern that happened to america connected Friday.”

Southwest operates on a point-to-point model, which means that its planes alert betwixt airports connected a diffuse network, portion different large carriers usage a hub-and-spoke model, which means that planes instrumentality to a cardinal airdrome aft each flight.

“When you bash that, you don’t benignant of shuttle backmost and distant to a hub, it makes the betterment overmuch much analyzable due to the fact that pilots are stuck each implicit the country. And you can’t conscionable substitute 1 formation for different coming successful and retired of the hub,” Joe Schwieterman, a proscription adept and prof astatine DePaul University, told NPR successful an Oct. 13 interview.

Also, the aforesaid problems that Southwest pointed to — upwind and aerial postulation power issues — impact the manufacture arsenic a whole, Henry Harteveldt, a question manufacture analyst, said successful the aforesaid NPR report.

But, Harteveldt said, “while different airlines were capable to drawback backmost to their mean level of cognition reasonably quickly, Southwest has been struggling. And connected Sunday, they conscionable had a full meltdown.”

On Monday, arsenic claims astir the cancellations were flourishing, the FAA again took to Twitter to clarify: “To beryllium clear: None of the accusation from Southwest, its pilots union, oregon the FAA indicates that this weekend’s cancellations were related to vaccine mandates.”

So, there’s nary grounds that idiosyncratic protests led to Southwest’s cancellations implicit the weekend, but determination is grounds that a operation of different factors combined to origin logistical problems for the company.

Editor’s note: SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made imaginable by a assistance from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The instauration has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed successful our articles bash not needfully bespeak the views of the foundation. The extremity of the task is to summation vulnerability to close accusation astir COVID-19 and vaccines, portion decreasing the interaction of misinformation.