Southwest pilots, flight attendants say they're exhausted; pilots ready to picket

Southwest employees say they're overworked, consistently forced to work flights not on their schedules and unable to call in sick without seeing a company doctor.

Southwest Airlines pilots are preparing to picket as front-line employees at the airline complain of mismanagement, low staffing, scheduling chaos and a lack of food and hotels for pilots and flight attendants. Unions representing Southwest's front-line employees say the airline is severely understaffed, but continues to pack its flight schedule as air travel rebounds, forcing pilots and flight attendants to regularly work the maximum number of hours permitted by federal law. Staffing and weather issues have forced Southwest to cancel thousands of flights this summer. On Thursday, by late afternoon, Southwest had canceled 170 flights and delayed 852 others, the most of any U.S. airline. At the same time, United had 31 cancellations, while Delta had four. "We are united on this issue. Our flight attendants are weary, exhausted, and they can take no more," Lyn Montgomery, Southwest flight attendant and union president, told ABC News. "We're asking that additional flights not be added to the schedule until the company can handle the flight schedules that we currently have. We all want to get back to the pre-pandemic days, but we have to be able to handle things the way they are right now, the way things are still with the pandemic."