TAMPA, Fla. — Thousands of flight cancellations this holiday weekend kept travelers guessing when they would make it to their final destination. In addition, staff shortages and severe weather continue to impact passengers on Monday.
On Christmas Eve, the mayhem started as flights across the country were canceled due to staffing shortages and winter weather. Unfortunately, the weekend brought little relief. And, on Monday, another hurdle, a computer outage.
"My flight was canceled because the airline have problems with the computer system, not for COVID," Emperatriz Marique said.
Marique and her family are flying out of Tampa on Sun Country Airlines. Monday afternoon, the company tweeted, "we were made aware of a temporary third-party system outage affecting all Sun Country Flights. Our operations team is continuing to execute our manual process with the FAA to safely clear flights for takeoff."
The airline anticipates delays to continue throughout the afternoon.
"Now, I need to find another flight for Minnesota. Minnesota has my family from Venezuela, too," Marique said. "If God wants, I travel. It's OK. No? I stay here in Tampa."
Marique had a better attitude than most facing cancellations and delays. At last check, Veronica Citron, a spokesperson with Tampa International Airport, said cancellations were at 26 in and out of TPA for Monday. The main issue facing travelers at TPA are delays, mixed with some cancellations.
The airport is extremely busy. Citron told ABC Action News reporter Michael Paluska.
"From Thursday through Monday (projected), we've seen an estimated 310,944 passengers at TPA (includes departing and arriving). That's an average of 62,188 per day," he said.
It isn't all bad news. Most passengers we talked to had no issues traveling today or before the holiday.
"For us, it's been trouble-free. We had a little bit of a delay coming down from Baltimore to here, but plane ride was good, Southwest was good to us airports been good so we've enjoyed ourselves," Dale Hirschman said.
For updated flight information at Tampa International, click here.
