The CEO of Southwest Airlines has denied the Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating the airline's meltdown during the December travel rush.
A severe winter affected all airlines just before Christmas last year, but Southwest struggled far more than others to recover. Almost 17,000 flights were canceled, stranding more than 2 million customers.
Unions said the technology used to reassign crews to planes was overwhelmed, with workers spending hours on hold when they called headquarters for instructions.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg vowed to hold the airline accountable for the debacle, with the Department of Transportation (DOT) announcing in January that it is investigating whether Southwest deceived customers by knowingly scheduling more flights than it could realistically handle.
Last month, Politico reported that the DOJ had joined the ongoing probe.
But Southeast CEO Bob Jordan denied that was the case in a recent interview with WFAA.
"It's a headline. To date, there's nothing from the DOJ," he said.
"We'll work with any government entity that we need to. But there's nothing going on with the DOJ. Just the DOT."
A Southwest spokesperson told Newsweek on Wednesday: "We continue to cooperate with the Department of Transportation in its investigation; it remains our understanding that the DOT is taking the lead in this matter.
"We have not received any inquiries from the Department of Justice but remain ready to cooperate with all interested government agencies."
Newsweek has contacted the DOJ for comment via the department's website.
It comes after Southwest planes nationwide were briefly grounded last month because of what the airline called "intermittent technology issues."
An airline spokesperson told Newsweek at the time that Southwest temporarily paused flight activity "to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure."
In the interview with WFAA, Jordan said that while "hiccups happen regularly" in the airline industry, he is confident the company will not see a repeat of the debacle.
"I'm very confident that we have plans in place to make sure that that does not happen," he said. "And those plans will all be accomplished by winter of 2023."
He added: "We're positioning ourselves. There can't be a reoccurrence of what happened in December. There cannot."
Southwest said in March that it is buying more deicing trucks, engine covers and heaters, as well as lining up additional deicing pads at key airports.
The airline also said it would increase staffing during extreme weather and upgrade crew scheduling and customer phone systems.
Update 5/17/23, 11:30 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to add comment from a Southwest Airlines spokesperson.
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