Southwest Airlines , Posts Massive Loss , After Holiday Meltdown.<br />NBC reports that Southwest Airlines <br />has reported a $220 million loss for the <br />fourth quarter following a holiday meltdown. .<br />The holiday incident drove up expenses for the air carrier <br />and cost the company millions in revenue in what was <br />predicted to be the busiest travel season since 2020.<br />Earlier this month, Southwest announced <br />that it had canceled about 16,700 flights <br />between December 21 and 31. .<br />According to Southwest spokesman <br />Jay McVay, cancellations snowballed <br />as storms moved across the U.S.<br />So we’ve been chasing our tails, <br />trying to catch up and get back<br />to normal safely, which is our <br />No. 1 priority, as quickly as we could. <br />And that’s exactly how we <br />ended up where we are today, Scott Mayerowitz, executive editor of The Points Guy travel site, via NBC.<br />So we’ve been chasing our tails, <br />trying to catch up and get back<br />to normal safely, which is our <br />No. 1 priority, as quickly as we could. <br />And that’s exactly how we <br />ended up where we are today, Scott Mayerowitz, executive editor of The Points Guy travel site, via NBC.<br />When bad weather hits, and you have <br />staffing issues like they did, it creates <br />a situation that is near impossible to <br />recover from, and it couldn’t have <br />happened during a worse possible week, Scott Mayerowitz, executive editor of The Points Guy travel site, via NBC.<br />When bad weather hits, and you have <br />staffing issues like they did, it creates <br />a situation that is near impossible to <br />recover from, and it couldn’t have <br />happened during a worse possible week, Scott Mayerowitz, executive editor of The Points Guy travel site, via NBC.<br />The cancellations, which were caused <br />by severe winter weather across the U.S., <br />hit Southwest's pretax results by $800 million. .<br />NBC reports that following <br />the release of the results, shares in Southwest <br />went down about 3% in premarket trading.<br />Based on estimates compiled by Refinitiv, <br />analysts anticipate per-share profits in <br />Southwest of 19 cents for the current quarter
