Southwest Ends FHS Tourney Plan

It was by no means the only sports team with its plans thrown into chaos by the mass flight cancellations by Southwest Air – but the plight of the Franklin High School boys' varsity basketball team was the one WCVB focused on in yesterday’s coverage.

Instead of attending a tournament in Florida, the team, that has spent much of the year raising some $40,000 to support the trip, were stuck at home doing practice routines. Quoted in the WCVB broadcast, coach C.J. Neeley lamented, "The seniors won't have an opportunity to ever go on this trip now.”

Of course, the FHS team was just the tip of an iceberg of unhappy patrons, with many blaming the company rather than the weather for the situation.

Among the critics were Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), members of the Senate Commerce Committee. The two released the following statement Tuesday:

“Southwest Airlines is failing consumers during the most important travel week of the year.”

The statement went on to describe the debacle and ended with a challenge: “Southwest cannot avoid compensating passengers by claiming these flight cancellations were caused by recent winter storms. As Southwest executives have acknowledged, the mass cancellations yesterday were largely due to the failure of its own internal systems. As such, those cancellations should be categorized as ‘controllable,’ and Southwest should compensate passengers accordingly.”