Thousands of passengers were left without power and on Wednesday evening Spirit Airlines entered its fourth day of flight delays and cancellations.
According to FlightAware Flighttracker, 367 of the budget airline's flights or 53% of its schedule were cancelled as of 12: 30 p.m. ET as depressed customers continued to seek answers on social media, both in person and online.
SPIRIT AIRLINE PASSENGERS REPORTEDLY STRANDED FOR MORE DECLARED 30 HOURS WITH 'NO SORT OF RESOLVE'.
More than 40 flights were labeled as delayed.
On Tuesday, Spirit cancelled around 60% of its schedule, or more than 400 flights, and nearly 100 other flights were late.
Photos showed multiple lines both inside and outside single airports, with frustrated passengers sitting behind their bags as they continued to wait.
The airline told FOX Business that the cancellations and delays had been caused by a series of technical and weather challenges on Monday.
While passengers at airports have previously speculated that the travel disruptions were due to pilot strikes, both the Air Line Pilots Association and Spirit told Fox Business that reports are inaccurate.
Spirit Airlines said it proactively canceled some flights to reset the operation.
We're working round the clock to mitigate the travel disruptions caused by overlapping operational challenges including weather, system outages and staffing shortages in some areas of operation, spokesman Erik Hofmeyer said. We're working to provide refunds for cancellations and, when possible, to re-accommodate our guests on other flights.
A Tuesday morning outage also affected crew scheduling, preventing airline officials from rescheduling crews, according to an individual familiar with the situation.
Why is it so frustrating for our Guests when plans change unexpectedly, and we're working hard to find solutions," the South Florida-based airline told FOX Business on Tuesday. We ask guests to always check their emails and flight status before leaving a terminal.
On Spirit's Twitter account, the airline instructed passengers to visit their webchat.
Customers have complained about being put on hold for hours when placing phone calls to Spirit.
When airline passengers reach new pandemic-era highs, airlines like Spirit are scrambling to meet the increased demand.
U.S. air travel has recovered to approximately 80% of 2019 levels, with more than 2.2 million people going through checkpoints last weekend through the checkpoints.
After receiving $54 billion in taxpayer dollars to keep employees on the payroll through the COVID -19 pandemic airlines still reduced staff.
The industry recovery may face another public health threat as the coronavirus delta variant continues to spread, but officials said they have not seen bookings suffer due to the strain.