Spirit Airlines has canceled roughly 1,800 flights since Sunday due to staffing issues, weather, and technical issues. The airline canceled 446, or 56% of its flights on Thursday, and the trend will continue on Friday, causing major inconveniences for summer travelers.

Chief Executive Officer Ted Christie says the cancellations are expected to continue into next week so the company can regain its footing.

“There is definitely a lot of angry people. Right now, all I can say is we’re very sorry for what happened,” Christie said. “When we reach this level of disruption, being able to recover does require a lot of resources, we’re not built to deal with this level of disruption and I think there’s some learning in there about how we might create variability in staffing so that we can deal with this.

"Our crews ... were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we needed to build that puzzle back together again. Unfortunately, that takes a lot of time to do. So we started canceling deeper and deeper into the operation to give them that time," Christie added.

The chaos of the past few days angered many customers who have been stranded at airports. The sharp rebound in travel from a year ago has only added to the problems. Christie said the airline is beginning to turn the tide and things will soon go back to normal.

“We’re going to do everything we can to earn back the confidence of our guests and the traveling public," he said. "We believe we can do that."

Christie added that the company will give refunds to customers affected by the cancellations. He added that in hindsight the airline should have canceled more flights earlier to recalibrate. Instead, it chose to maintain flights to cater to a large number of travelers.