For Jim Mackenzie, travel chaos has been unending since Friday.

Multiple canceled flights to his wife’s family in Minneapolis left the 67-year-old stranded in his home in Albany, New York. When he finally got a Southwest Airlines flight to BWI on Monday for his connecting flight to Minneapolis, he realized that his travails had only just begun.

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Weather is an understandable obstacle, but there’s more to it, said Bill McGee, a senior fellow for aviation at American Economic Liberties Project, a group that has called for stricter regulation of the airline industry.

“It’s not about external conditions. It’s about how the airline is built to adapt to it,” he said.

Southwest was particularly vulnerable, he said, because of its failure to invest in IT and a lack of support in call centers.

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