Southwest Airlines cancelled more than 2,000 flights over the weekend, citing bad weather and air traffic control issues, however, the situation gave rise to unsupported claims from the conservative politicians blaming vaccine mandates began taking off.

Republican politicians and pundits, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, alleged the flight disruptions resulted from pilots and air traffic controllers walking off their jobs or calling in sick to protest federal vaccination requirements.

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“Joe Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate at work!” Cruz tweeted Sunday. “Suddenly, we’re short on pilots & air traffic controllers. #ThanksJoe.”

But the airline, its pilots’ union and the Federal Aviation Administration denied the claims. “The weekend challenges were not a result of Southwest employee demonstrations,” Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said on Monday.

However, the clarification hasn’t stopped the circulation of the false narrative, as Twitter posts claiming airline employees were “standing up to medical tyranny” and participating in a “mass sickout” amassed thousands of shares, according to AP inputs.

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Vague and anonymous messages on social media speculated that Southwest was hiding the real reason for its disruptions. And anti-vaccine rallying cries such as #DoNotComply, #NoVaccineMandate and #HoldTheLine were among the 10 most popular hashtags tweeted in connection to Southwest over the weekend, according to a report from media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.

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The crisis peaked on Sunday, when the airline cancelled more than 1,100 flights, or 30% of its schedule. By Tuesday evening, it had cancelled fewer than 100 flights, or 2% of its schedule, although more than 1,000 flights were delayed, according to tracking service FlightAware.

Even as flights appeared to be running closer to normal on Tuesday, the Texas-based airline remained at the centre of the latest front in the vaccine mandate culture war, its challenges exploited by opponents of vaccine requirements.

With inputs from the Associated Press