A NATION ON STANDBY — If you're reading this while sitting on the floor near the closest electrical outlet as you monitor the latest in a string of flight delays and cancelations, know that you are very much not alone. Southwest Airlines tallied more than 2,000 flights canceled Friday through Monday afternoon, citing bad weather and air traffic controller problems. The FAA acknowledged that the weather and an ATC staffing shortage in Jacksonville, Fla., as well as military training in the area, were factors, but shot back that the problems were limited in scope. And it's worth noting that there weren't mass delays at multiple airlines. Just Southwest. But even if you've never queued at DCA with a B29 on your boarding pass while praying to get the last aisle seat, get ready for more of this. Domestic airlines, eager to rebound and regain profits lost during Covid shutdowns, are not equipped to handle even a basic blip in service. Butterfly-effect cascades like the one in Jacksonville this weekend are increasingly likely to shut down air travel, especially as holiday travel ramps up. Or put it this way: A chance of flurries quickly snowballs into a broader fiasco, said Scott Hamilton, an aviation industry analyst for consulting firm Leeham Company LLC. "I think there's just this drive to try to return to profitability as soon as possible and do that by putting flights back into schedule," Hamilton said. Southwest may be dealing with other issues behind the scenes, Hamilton said, such as inadequate staffing. But it's not the only airline that's likely to be trying to get a lot of passengers onto planes a little faster than its workforce — not just pilots and flight attendants, but also mechanics and agents and call-center workers who handle reservations — allows for. American Airlines and Spirit, among others, have seen travel meltdowns this year. Over the course of the pandemic, consumers have filed more than 100,000 airline complaints to the Department of Transportation, with 87 percent of those complaints pertaining to refund mishandlings after a canceled flight, according to DOT. A number of conservatives blamed the "Biden vaccine mandate" for Southwest's unpleasant holiday. Southwest said today it would comply with the administration's vaccine decree even after Texas Gov Greg Abbott issued an edict Monday that would ban vax mandates for private business in his state. On social media, rumors swirled of mass walkouts from Southwest pilots and air traffic controllers. But the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, its pilot union, said nothing of the sort was true. The delays were not attributed to mass sickouts "either related to the recent mandatory vaccine mandate or otherwise," the association said. Ben Wakana of the White House Covid-19 Response Team backed up that claim, as did the FAA in a rare statement on Twitter. Southwest's CEO said today on CNBC that while the company has "some very strong views on that topic," referring to the mandate, it was not the issue causing cancellations over the weekend. But crew availability is still a substantial factor likely contributing to Southwest's latest setback — whether that's tied to vaccine mandates or not, said Robert Mann, an airline industry analyst. "I think what you see is a reduction in what I would term volunteerism," Mann said. Southwest has one of the lowest percentages of reserve pilots — those who work in an on-call, often standby status — compared to the rest of the industry, he said. Vaccine mandates might fit into the story in a smaller way, Mann said. It's possible that pilots who object to the contractual vaccine mandates are "not volunteering at the same rate as they historically would have, and that creates a problem because you can't staff the operation if you don't have the level of volunteers." So keep your tray tables in the locked and upright position. Americans are planning for a pre-pandemic holiday travel season. But we're in the middle of a post-pandemic crisis for the travel system that's still unfolding. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at opawlyk@politico.com or on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
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