{"id":432807,"date":"2025-12-08T07:58:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T07:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/432807\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T07:58:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T07:58:33","slug":"fine-against-southwest-airlines-for-2022-winter-storm-cancellations-waived-by-department-of-transportation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/432807\/","title":{"rendered":"Fine against Southwest Airlines for 2022 winter storm cancellations waived by Department of Transportation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Department of Transportation is waiving part of a fine assessed against Southwest Airlines<\/a> after the company canceled thousands of flights during a winter storm in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under a 2023 settlement reached by the Biden administration, Southwest agreed to a $140 million civil penalty. The government said at the time that the penalty was the largest it had ever imposed on an airline for violating consumer protection laws.<\/p>\n

Most of the money went toward compensation for travelers. But Southwest agreed to pay $35 million to the U.S. Treasury. Southwest made a $12 million payment in 2024 and a second $12 million payment earlier this year. But the Transportation Department issued an order Friday waiving the final $11 million payment, which was due Jan. 31, 2026.<\/p>\n

The department said Southwest should get credit for significantly improving its on-time performance and investing in network operations.<\/p>\n

“DOT believes that this approach is in the public interest as it incentivizes airlines to invest in improving their operations and resiliency, which benefits consumers directly,” the department said in a statement. “This credit structure allows for the benefits of the airline’s investment to be realized by the public, rather than resulting in a government monetary penalty.”<\/p>\n

The fine stemmed from a winter storm in December 2022 that paralyzed Southwest’s operations in Denver and Chicago and then snowballed when a crew-rescheduling system couldn’t keep up with the chaos. Ultimately the airline canceled 17,000 flights and stranded more than 2 million travelers.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration determined that Southwest had violated the law by failing to help customers who were stranded in airports and hotels<\/a>, leaving many of them to scramble for other flights. Many who called the airline’s overwhelmed customer service center got busy signals or were stuck on hold for hours.<\/p>\n

Even before the settlement, the nation’s fourth-biggest airline by revenue said the meltdown cost it more than $1.1 billion in refunds and reimbursements, extra costs and lost ticket sales over several months.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Department of Transportation is waiving part of a fine assessed against Southwest Airlines after the company…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":432808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,18817,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-432807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-southwest-airlines","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115682889233696730","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}