Southwest Airlines returned to a relatively normal flight schedule on Friday, as the focus shifts to making things right with what could be well more than a million passengers who missed family connections or flights home during the holidays, and many of whom are still missing luggage. The Dallas carrier, which had cancelled thousands of flights every day this week after a winter storm last weekend, reported less than 40 cancellations early Friday. While that was still more than United, American and Delta combined, it’s progress following one of the most chaotic weeks in aviation history for a single airline. Federal regulators have vowed a rigorous review of what happened at Southwest, with all eyes on outdated crew-scheduling technology that left flight crews out of place after the storm hit, essentially shutting down almost all of the carrier’s operations. On Friday, however, Southwest passengers reported relatively empty flights, some with one person to a row, as the carrier reshuffled routes and sent planes, and crews, to where they needed to be. John and Rosaria Monte had been watching their Southwest flights closely this week as the airline struggled and their home city of Buffalo, New York, dug out for a deadly blizzard.
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