Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Southwest is, and has been, my airline of choice for years. I've had MANY positive experiences there, and they have never failed to get me where I needed to go, on time.
Curiously, though, they appear to be in the middle of a massive meltdown. Even today, they have apparently cancelled two-thirds of their flights, nationwide. I know, the big winter storm and all, but seems like it was just last summer that they had a huge fail because of "bad weather/ATC issues" in Florida. I know other carriers have also had problems, but none as big as the LUV guys. I have also read they have huge morale problems system-wide because of mandatory overtime, plus no sick leave as an excuse unless you have a note from your doctor. Hmmm...
Is this all true? Any ideas on why they are having extensive problems?? I have a couple of trips booked with them in the next few weeks, now I'm wondering if I should consider alternatives....
My sister was supposed to fly from Oklahoma City to Orange County, CA (SNA) on Sunday, Christmas, leaving around noon. She was notified at 11pm on Christmas Eve that her flight was not only canceled but rescheduled for WEDNESDAY. Not only is she losing a full three days of her trip, they routed her OKC--San Antonio--LAX--Oakland !!--SNA.
She has been trying and trying but unable to reach anyone at the airline to let them know she intends to end her trip at LAX (it's a bit farther for us, but not that big a deal). I know it's Christmas and all, but as long as there are flights scheduled, you'd think someone would be available to speak with passengers.
Last summer, she flew out here on Southwest. When she left, she had a layover in Las Vegas and was told after arrival that her connecting flight was canceled and that no planes would be flying east for two days because of storms. No hotel or other compensation was offered. Rather than camp out in the Las Vegas airport for 48 hours, she opted to exchange her ticket home for a ticket back to SNA. She spent the next two days with us and then bought another one-way ticket to get home.
I've always had good experiences with Southwest and also wonder what's going on.
My sister was supposed to fly from Oklahoma City to Orange County, CA (SNA) on Sunday, Christmas, leaving around noon. She was notified at 11pm on Christmas Eve that her flight was not only canceled but rescheduled for WEDNESDAY. Not only is she losing a full three days of her trip, they routed her OKC--San Antonio--LAX--Oakland !!--SNA.
She has been trying and trying but unable to reach anyone at the airline to let them know she intends to end her trip at LAX (it's a bit farther for us, but not that big a deal). I know it's Christmas and all, but as long as there are flights scheduled, you'd think someone would be available to speak with passengers.
Hopefully she'll be able to get ahold of someone to let them know what she's planning. If she has checked baggage, it's going to be checked through to SNA and she won't be able to get it at LAX. Also, if she just walks away at LAX without telling anyone, her entire return flight is liable to be cancelled. If she can't get ahold of anyone beforehand, and she decides to leave at LAX, I would recommend that she first go to the gate for her connecting flight to Oakland, show them her ticket, and tell the gate agent that she will not be boarding the flight (or the one from there to SNA) and would like to cancel the remaining outbound flights. That way, she's not a no-show. She needs to stress to the agent that she wants to keep her return reservations to OKC.
As for the original question, I have no idea what's going on with Southwest. When they work, they work great. But I get the impression that they're stretched thin, with little extra "slack" in their system (either additional seats for passengers or extra crew to handle disruptions), and if something goes wrong, the whole system collapses.
Hopefully she'll be able to get ahold of someone to let them know what she's planning. If she has checked baggage, it's going to be checked through to SNA and she won't be able to get it at LAX. Also, if she just walks away at LAX without telling anyone, her entire return flight is liable to be cancelled. If she can't get ahold of anyone beforehand, and she decides to leave at LAX, I would recommend that she first go to the gate for her connecting flight to Oakland, show them her ticket, and tell the gate agent that she will not be boarding the flight (or the one from there to SNA) and would like to cancel the remaining outbound flights. That way, she's not a no-show. She needs to stress to the agent that she wants to keep her return reservations to OKC.
As for the original question, I have no idea what's going on with Southwest. When they work, they work great. But I get the impression that they're stretched thin, with little extra "slack" in their system (either additional seats for passengers or extra crew to handle disruptions), and if something goes wrong, the whole system collapses.
Thanks for the advice. She will only have a carry-on, but I will tell her about going to the gate and everything you said. We definitely do not want her return ticket canceled!
I flew out of Austin today. Almost all airlines had delays, but Southwest had cancellations. The gate next to our Delta gate was a Southwest flight to San Diego. They announced that anyone who lived in Austin should just go home as they wouldn’t fly for the next few days. The folks who weren’t from Austin were told they might get a flight in 48 hours.
A lot of airlines have bad days, but Southwest seems to have complete meltdowns.
Their CEO just announced they going to only fly 30% of their schedule tomorrow.
Never had any issues with Southwest before today. But today's was absolutely unacceptable and preventable - they were the only airline that this happened to. I'm one of the lucky ones - only out a vacation day and having to rent a car and drive tomorrow - which I do most years on Christmas anyway but I tried flying this year. Oops. Christmas is perhaps the single most important family holiday of the year so that's the time the airlines absolutely have to get it right, and if one airline drops the ball and the others are in normal range of expectation for winter storms, then that one airline needs to be called out.
I won't spend another dime on Southwest until the investigation is complete and there's a full explanation.
Decades of underinvestment in their IT systems. Their crew scheduling software melted down and they had no effective way of matching points and flight attendants, planes and destinations, and it relies on their phone system to notify crews of where they were being sent. Said phone system shares ‘bandwidth’ with their customer service lines, which got swamped from last week’s blizzards and they were unable to notify pilots and FAs of where they needed to be or what their hotel assignments were.
And since the FAA got really strict about crew rest after Colgan Air 3407, a pilot or FA hanging out in an employee lounge at Midway or Baltimore is not considered to be in their crew rest period so you have large numbers of flight crews going illegal while waiting for a call to be reassigned flights.
Yep, sister called me early this morning and said a text came through to her phone at 2:30am saying her flight is canceled. "But you can rebook!" She got up this morning and tried to rebook. The old flight is still showing as NOT canceled, but the arrival time at LAX is now listed as Saturday.
This is gross incompetence on the part of SW. Blaming the weather when it was their software that went down was a nice try, but anyone with half a brain can see that no other airlines had issues of even a fraction the magnitude of SW, and they all experienced the same weather.
What really infuriates me, besides the fact that the whole vacation week will go by and we will NOT have seen my sister and nephews, is that as of now there is no mechanism for actually refunding the people who are now out hundreds or thousands of dollars for flights that didn't happen, due to incompetence. Not weather, which is no one's fault, but INCOMPETENCE. They say they will refund for "reasonable alternative transportation," but if you bought tickets and then just had to stay home because your flight vanished, you apparently get nothing.
They’ve zeroed out all rebooking options for the next three days.
It’s not incompetence; it’s how a low cost carrier decides to contain costs by not investing in system infrastructure. And WN is just too big and has too complex of a system at this point to not make necessary investments like that.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
