Author: Dawn Gilbertson, USA TODAY

Pilots at American and Southwest airlines are being warned to keep vaccine mandate issues out of the cockpit due to potential flight safety concerns.

The rapidly growing Minneapolis-based budget airline caters to vacationers and travelers visiting friends and relatives.

Some travelers say Southwest’s vouchers aren’t enough. They want reimbursement for hotels, flights on other airlines and car rentals.

Southwest Airlines canceled 1 in 4 flights over the holiday weekend, but it wasn’t clear why. Here’s what its president and COO Mike Van de Ven said.

Airline travelers are only owed refunds, hotel and meal vouchers in certain cancellation circumstances.

Southwest has already canceled hundreds of Monday flights after canceling 30% of its Sunday flights and 24% on Saturday.

Stranded Southwest Airlines passengers scrambled to find new flights, hotels and rental cars after the airline canceled 1,800+ weekend flights.

The airline’s Hawaii sale is good for travel in early 2022.

The CDC also lowered the COVID travel alert level for several destinations, including France, Iceland and Portugal.

Aha, focusing on flights to and from Reno-Tahoe, is the reincarnation of ExpressJet, which shut down in 2020 after it lost a contract with United.