Spirit Airlines cancellations: Some Tampa flights resume, others stay grounded
The backup of Spirit Airlines flights at Tampa International Airport is continuing for a fifth straight day, with at least 26 flights into and out of the airport canceled Thursday.
Flights to and from destinations such as Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Atlantic City were canceled by 4:30 p.m., according to flight tracking site FlightAware.com. Out of Spirit’s 34 scheduled Tampa flights on Thursday, only between four and eight were scheduled to have gone through.
The new Spirit cancellations come after 28 Tampa flights were called off Wednesday, the most since the carrier’s dramatic slowdown began last weekend. Including today’s cancellations, Spirit is up to 126 disrupted flights in Tampa since July 31.
Only a handful of Spirit flights have taken off and landed this week, said airport spokesperson Ashley Iaccarino, including several Thursday morning.
Spirit blamed poor weather, backups from last weekend and “staffing shortages that caused widespread irregularities in our operation and impacted crew scheduling,” the company said in a statement Wednesday. The carrier said flight cancellations would “progressively drop” in the coming days.
Nationwide, Spirit had already canceled another 415 flights by 4:30 p.m. That was the second most cancellations of any carrier in the world on Thursday, according to FlightAware.com. And it was more than eight times the number by the next highest American carrier, American Airlines, which has also been beset with delays and cancellations this week.
