CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Bad weather and staffing shortages have caused major irritations on Southwest Airline flights in and out of Corpus Christi.
Flyers are having to be rebooked onto other flights with passengers scrambling to figure out another way to get to their final destinations.
Corpus Christi International Airport Director of Aviation Kevin Smith said that while flyers being stranded is a possibility, it's something they're seeing sparingly.
"Met with Southwest leadership this morning to find out how many people have actually been stranded here and they said very, very few people are stranded here. They did put up a couple of people in hotels, but it's on a case-by-case basis," Smith said.
Clutch Rodriguez is one of those stranded passengers. He's been trying to get back to his job in Kentucky after spending the holiday here. But with no flights leaving out of Corpus Christi on Southwest, he's stuck at the airport.
"If they could help me out with a hotel or something and they said no," Rodriguez said. "So I told him 'well I'll be pretty much stuck here in Corpus Christi. Is there anyway that you can help me out? Can I sleep here?'"
Pedro Villarreal has been trying to get back to New Orleans since Monday. He told 3NEWS that after multiple attempts he finally gave up trying to fly there.
"They canceled three times so the easiest option was just to rent a car and drive back to New Orleans," Villarreal said.
Smith said he is still working on bringing in new airlines to Corpus Christi. He said that if the airport could have partnered with Breeze Airways, then that would've taken the pressure off of Southwest Airlines.
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