What the COVID tyrants fear more than anything is mass bottom-up resistance to their
unscientific demands for conformity. So, who do you think is telling the truth about the thousands, yes you read that right, thousands of Southwest Airlines flights that were cancelled over the weekend and on Monday?
The Airline?
Or the FAA?
By comparison, American Airlines (AAL) - Get American Airlines Group, Inc. Report on Sunday cancelled 63 flights, United Airlines (UAL) - Get United Airlines Holdings, Inc. Report nine flights and Delta Air Lines (DAL) - Get Delta Air Lines, Inc. Report only two flights, according to FlightAware data reported by The Street.
Based on the available information, we’re going with the FAA, and so is Senator Ted Cruz.
Fox Business reported Senator Cruz took to Twitter to blame the mass grounding on Biden’s vaccine mandates, saying, “"Joe Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate a work! Suddenly, we’re short on pilots & air traffic controllers."
Leland Vittert, reporting for News Nation Now, made similar claims, tweeting, Airline sources say a mass “sickout” by Air Traffic Controllers at Jacksonville, Florida and a similar mass “sickout” among Southwest crews sparked a ripple effect causing the thousands of cancellations.
Bloomberg reported Southwest canceled more than a quarter of its scheduled flights Sunday, with the mass grounding stretching into Monday.
However, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, which last week said it was filing a temporary restraining order against the airline related to its Aug. 30 lawsuit over COVID-19 mandates, on Saturday said in a statement that its pilots are not the cause of the cancellations.
"SWAPA is aware of operational difficulties affecting Southwest Airlines today due to a number of issues, but we can say with confidence that our pilots are not participating in any official or unofficial job actions," the statement said.
We can think of a lot of legal and PR reasons the union would not want to own up to any role in a mass “sick out.” But remember, Southwest’s pilots union asked a judge to block the company’s vaccine mandate, saying in a legal filing that it “unlawfully imposes new conditions of employment” that had not been negotiated with the union. The company said this month that its workers must be vaccinated against the coronavirus by Dec. 8 to meet rules for federal contractors, reported the New York Times.
In their treatment of the mass grounding, reporters for The New York Times observed that, despite the denials from the airline and union, it is telling that many immediately drew the connection between the vaxx mandate and the mass grounding. The union had warned that enforcing the mandate could lead to labor shortages and service disruptions, an argument that is likely to play out elsewhere as vaccination deadlines loom.
Our friend Republican Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21) gave some confirmation that this was an employee protest by proclaiming himself “100% behind” employees at the Dallas-based company, which he called on his colleagues in the House and Senate to boycott
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Rep. Andy Biggs (AZ-5) similarly took up the cause of Southwest employees, with Biggs saying he stands with what he described as a fight for “freedom.”
“Shut them down,” wrote Roy. “And when they come begging for bailout — not one [Republican in the House] or [Senate] should support them.”
And it is not just Senators Cruz and Johnson, Representatives Roy and Biggs and solid reporters like Leland Vittert who have said the mass grounding was in response to the Southwest Airlines vaxx mandate. Over the weekend social media was full of posts by airline workers in opposition to vaccine mandates, of which among those that we caught, this one was the most powerful and well worth watching:
So, who are you going to believe? Southwest Airlines, or the FAA and reporters like Leland Vittert and Todd Starnes, who reported, “Met several Southwest flight attendants this weekend in Los Angeles -- and those delays have NOTHING to do with the weather.”
Southwest Airlines
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Pilot shortage
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