By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters), Southwest Airlines (NYSE 🙂 announced Tuesday it will operate “more normally” after having cancelled more than 2,200 flights in the past 24 hours.

On Tuesday, the U.S. airline reported that there had been approximately 90 cancellations out of 3,300 scheduled flights.

Southwest shares rose 1.3%

Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly stated that the cancellations by Southwest over the weekend had nothing to do with pilot protests about Southwest’s recent executive order, which required all employees to receive COVID-19 vaccines by December 8. This executive order was signed by President Joe Biden.

According to him, employee behavior was “all very normal… The process takes only a few days.

Southwest cancelled hundreds of flights in June because of an issue with its computer reservations system. Southwest also reported an additional issue on June 1st that necesitated a groundstop due to intermittent performance problems at its weather provider.

Kelly said that “it’s been an awful summer” and offered no excuses to CNBC. We have a lot of staffing problems, so we’ve slowed down our flights and increased our hiring.

Kelly explained that Kelly was “thinly staffed” going into the weekend. This certainly did not help.

Kelly explained that, “like many other companies we certainly are facing some hiring difficulties.” Our goal is to have 5,000 people employed by the end, and we are only halfway.

The Federal Aviation Administration said late Monday “to be clear: None of the information from Southwest, its pilots union, or the FAA indicates that this weekend’s cancellations were related to vaccine mandates.”

Responding to the “bullying” of the Biden Administration, Greg Abbott, Republican Governor of Texas, banned Monday all COVID-19 mandates within the state from any entity or private employer.

Southwest stated Tuesday that it knew about Abbott’s orders, but added “federal action overrides any state mandate or laws. We would expect to comply with President’s order in order to continue compliant as federal contractors.”