The Southwest Airlines Holiday Throughfall: A Meltdown That Hasn’t Destroyed a Single Passenger. A spokesperson said Monday night that the flight cancellations and advanced cancellations had heightened during the July Fourth

A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines (SWA) said the recent winter storm is to blame for the cascade of thousands of flight cancellations Monday and advanced cancellations Tuesday.

Southwest canceled more than 2,900 flights Monday — at least 70% of its schedule for the day — and more than 2,500 flights Tuesday as of 9:10 a.m. ET — at least 60% of its schedule, according to flight tracker FlightAware. Many passengers at airports are stuck with little idea of when they will get home or where their bags are because of the disruptions.

Other issues that have exacerbated the airline’s struggle to accommodate the holiday rush include problems with “connecting flight crews to their schedules,” Perry said. That issue has made it difficult for employees to access crew scheduling services and get reassignments.

The travel advice website Thrifty Traveler sent an email to CNN stating that travelers who are still stuck on Southwest should book a flight with another airline.

The airline would seem to have little reason to cancel many flights when there are clear skies. Potter calls it a “full-blown meltdown.”

There were long lines at ticket counters at multiple airports on Tuesday, while there were also a lot of unclaimed bags at airports, including Chicago’s Midway International, Harry Reid in Las Vegas and William P. Hobby.

Southwest spokesperson Jay McVay said in a news conference at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport on Monday night the airline will do everything possible to right the challenges passengers have experienced, including “hotels, ride assistance, vans … rental cars to try and make sure these folks get home as quickly as possible.”

Thousands of Delta pilots picketed at major airports throughout the summer to demand better pay, highlighting staff concerns, and to protest flight disruptions during the July Fourth holiday rush. After negotiations for a new contract were paused, Delta pilots voted to authorize a strike.

How Well Do Southwest Airlines Respond to the Monday Night Flight Cancellations? Jay McVay, CEO of Scott’s Cheap Flights, Inc., interviewed by WSJ.com

Air travelers in the US hoping for clear skies on Tuesday following a disastrous week of weather-related flight cancellations and delays will have to extend their patience a few more days — particularly if they’re flying with Southwest Airlines.

Airports most affected by the Wednesday cancellations are Denver International, followed by Chicago Midway International, Baltimore/Washington International, Dallas Love Field, Nashville International, Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas and Phoenix Sky Harbor International.

To recover, Jordan told the Wall Street Journal the company plans to operate just over a third of its schedule in upcoming days to give itself the ability for crews to get into the right positions.

“We had a tough day today. In all likelihood we’ll have another tough day tomorrow as we work our way out of this,” Jordan said in an interview Monday evening with WSJ.com.

CNN’s Carlos Suarez spoke with frustrated passengers in line at the Southwest ticket counter at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday afternoon.

Employees also said they have not been able to communicate with the airline, the president of the union that represents Southwest’s Flight Attendants told CNN Monday.

If you’ve been left in the lurch and your efforts to reach a customer service agent are going nowhere, the founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights suggests trying an international number.

“The main hotline for US airlines will be clogged with other passengers getting rebooked. To get through to an agent quickly, call any one of the airline’s dozens of international offices,” Scott Keyes said.

“As the storm continued to sweep across the country it continued to impact many of our larger stations and so the cancellations just compiled one after another to 100 to 150 to 1,000,” Jay McVay said in a press conference at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport on Monday night.

“We don’t have the normal hub the other major airlines do. We fly a point-to-point network, which means we can put our crews in the wrong places.

McVay said that the company’s first priority right now is safety. He said they wanted to make sure that the flights were safe and that the flight crews had enough time to operate them.

He said they’ll do everything they can to get the people home as quickly as possible.

McVay said to keep your receipts if you’ve already left. “We will make sure they are taken care of, that is not a question.”

An Airlines Executive Director Announced that a Winter Storm is Coming to an End: Southwest Airlines Cancelation and Intercity Bus Services Are Disrupted

The announcement made in the terminal apologized to customers and said there were seats available on the 31st and the 29th. Southwest would be transporting affected customers to area hotels and will have enough rooms for all of them, according to the agent.

“The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan,” USDOT said in a statement.

The vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association spoke to CNN on Tuesday, and he said the airline’s problems were the worst he had seen in 16 years.

He told CNN that they have been having these issues for the past 20 months. It really just has to be with outdated processes and outdated IT, because these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis.

“It’s phones, it’s computers, it’s processing power, it’s the programs used to connect us to airplanes – that’s where the problem lies, and it’s systemic throughout the whole airline,” he said.

The airport doesn’t plan to resume passenger flights until after 11 a.m. tomorrow, pushing back the expected reopening by another day.

— Greyhound, the largest provider of intercity bus service, issued a service alert on Monday afternoon stating many of its scheduled services in the upper northeast will be canceled or disrupted until further notice due to winter weather. Buffalo, Cleveland and Syracuse are affected.

A winter storm that swept across the US was ill-timed for travelers who had started pushing Christmas week flying numbers back toward pre-pandemic levels.

Southwest Airlines’ Flight Outage After the Decay: The Case for a More Modernized Staffing Scenario, According to a Former COO

In a recorded video, the then-COO said that they weren’t currently where they wanted to be with their staffing. CNN shared a transcript of the recording at the time. In this environment, we need more staffing cushion for the unexpected, and we are filling it with new people every day.

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan told employees in a memo that there was a lack of tools. The need to make the operation more modern is something we have talked about.

“Part of what we’re suffering is a lack of tools,” Jordan told employees. “We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that.”

Later that month, on a call with Wall Street analysts, then-CEO Gary Kelly said the company had made adjustments to prevent a similar meltdown in the future.

Kelly said on October 21 that capacity plans have been scaled back to adapt to the current staffing environment. The company is aggressively hiring to a goal of 5000 employees by the end of this year, and is currently more than halfway towards that goal.

After canceling roughly 13,000 flights in the last few days, the airline is planning to remain on a reduced flying schedule for a few more days, its CEO said in a statement late Tuesday.

Southwest’s scheduling system hasn’t changed since the 1990s. Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told employees this week that the outdated scheduling system was the main culprit for the outage.

US Senator Maria Cantwell, who chaired the Senate committee hearing last year, issued a statement Tuesday pledging the panel would be looking into the causes behind Southwest Airlines cascade of flight cancellations.

Taylor McClain was forced to miss his flight last Thursday from Salt Lake City to Chicago Midway. He rebooked for a 3 p.m. that didn’t end up departing until 9 p.m.

McClain’s return to Utah has been even more harrowing. He was scheduled to leave Chicago late Monday. It was canceled. Now, the soonest he’s been able to reschedule is for Thursday night.

The Denver-Brooklynn man who’s flying with Southwest Airlines is frustrated by his phone app’s failure to reach an agent

At least he’s lucky to be with his parents, but “I will burn multiple days of unplanned vacation and absorb four days worth of extra kennel fees for the dog I can’t get back to,” he says.

Southwest needs to bring up to date internal software systems, according to an analyst with the investment bank and financial services company.

“It’s not only their customer-facing systems, it’s their crew scheduling and so on,” Becker says. “Southwest has always been a laggard when it comes to technology.”

Southwest uses a point-to-point system in which planes fly from destination to destination and pick up staff along the way. Point-to-point systems have their advantages, as they can offer direct and more affordable flights because the destinations they stop at typically have less air traffic, but flight schedules can quickly fall apart once one route gets canceled.

The pilots of Southwest take off in the morning from one city then fly to several more. There’s a flight crew change somewhere in there and the plane flies one leg across the country and is back in the air the next day.

“When there is a weather situation like this, you have pilots that can’t get to where they need to be, because they aren’t based in the same city, or they live somewhere else, and it can be hard for flight crews to get there.” “So when there’s bad weather, everything tends to get out of position.”

There is a man who lives in Denver with his wife and two young children. The family was in New York City to celebrate a wedding anniversary and his daughter’s birthday.

The family flew out on the 21st, and planned to fly home on Christmas Eve. Just before they departed for the airport, Lenz checked his phone app “to make sure everything was good.”

It wasn’t very good. The flight was canceled. He was on the phone for hours, but couldn’t reach an agent. He used an app on his phone to rebook. He finally reached an agent on Monday. He asked, “Do you think this is going to be resolved by the time we fly out?”

The flight was moved to the 27th after the agent reassured him. “That’s when everything stopped working,” he says while talking about Tuesday’s flight.

The Denver-Toronto Experiment (Extended Abstract): Managing Southwest Airlines Through a Depression-Induced Mass Annihilation

Finally, the family decided to rent a car and drive back to Denver — a 26-hour drive. “There’s a place about halfway through in Illinois that’s 13 hours from here and 13 hours from from Denver. “Our goal is to pick up at the hotel again so that we can be there Thursday night, so that we can take a quick respite,” says Lenz.

Southwest has owned up to its problems as a result of the terrible things that have gone for both customers and the company. “From a PR perspective, they’re out in front,” she says. “They’re saying they’re buying meals for people, they’re putting people up in hotel rooms. They’re doing their best to get you where you need to go. They’re reimbursing you. They are buying tickets on other airlines.

Potter says the airlines’ failures mean customers end up paying the price. If the carriers are allowed to keep running these razor thin margins, mass delays andcanceling will continue even after a storm or a mechanic strike.

The mass cancellations have travelers at airports waiting in line for two or more hours to rebook their new flights, which, unfortunately, won’t occur anytime soon. A number of passengers have not been able to book flights until the end of the week and the New Year, which causes them to sleep on the floors of the airport.

When thousands of flights were canceled due to staffing shortages in June, Buttigieg met with the CEOs of major domestic airlines and asked them to detail how they’d fix operations in writing.

“I told them that I wanted them to be held accountable for their responsibilities to customers and that this can’t happen again,” he said.

What Happened When Southwest Airlines Announced: Trisha Jones’s Flight Back to Wichita, Kansas, Was Done For Christmas

Passenger Trisha Jones told CNN at the airport in Atlanta that she and her partner had been traveling for five days, trying to get home to Wichita, Kansas, after disembarking from a cruise at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Jones noted that they were able to rent a car so they could go see their family for Christmas in the bay area. It breaks my heart when I see families sleeping on the floor.

The secretary said he told the CEO that he expected Southwest to offer refunds and expense reimbursement to the passengers without them having to ask.

“Southwest should issue significant monetary compensation to customers whose holidays have been ruined because of the flight delays,” said a statement issued on Tuesday by the Democratic senators.

“While all of the other parts of the aviation system have been moving toward recovery and getting better each day, it’s actually been moving the opposite direction with this airline,” said Buttigieg.

The statement suggested that Jordan did not anticipate massive changes to the procedures of Southwest due to the mass cancellation.

“The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well 99% of the time, but clearly we need to double-down on our already-existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what’s happening right now,” said Jordan.

“Every airline in the country is jam-packed right now, so your odds of even finding a seat — let alone at an even halfway decent price — get smaller by the hour,” Potter said.

“Travelers in the thick of this should be sure to save all their receipts: other flights, a rental car, nights at the hotel, meals, anything,” Potter said.

The Southwest Airlines Pandemic Aid Program: How to Prevent Lags and Furloughs during the 2018 Holiday Season and How to Prepare for the Next Big Thing

An American Airlines spokesman told CNN that the price caps are different in areas affected by canceled flights. Southwest did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

One traveler posted a screenshot showing flights from San Diego to Orlando with American, Delta and United fares that cost more than $2,000. The passenger attempted to book a new flight after a canceled Southwest flight.

“We continue to get people to their destinations as safely and quickly as possible this busy holiday season and our latest effort includes capping fares in select cities to make sure our flights are available to as many customers as possible,” Freed told CNN.

Making the travel nightmare worse, Southwest has a policy of not rebooking customers on rival airlines. Southwest Airlines does not have agreements with other airlines that would allow its agents to rebook stranded passengers on other airlines.

The transportation industry stopped working in early 2020 after the coronaviruses, and the US government provided more than $54 billion in aid to help make up for it.

Southwest Airlines received seven billion dollars from that program. This week it had a system failure the likes of which aviation has never seen in the last 18 months.

[The pandemic aid] “is water under the bridge at this point,” said Robert Mann, a Port Washington, New York-based airline industry analyst. “The only distinguishing factors at this point are to what degree carriers have satisfied obligations that permit them to either return to paying dividends or return to paying higher officer salaries.”

The airlines were kept running despite the plunge in air travel during the early 2020s. Preventing layoffs and furloughs in the transportation sector was a critical focal point as employees such as pilots are subject to training requirements and other certifications that, if lagged, could significantly disrupt air travel for a considerable time.

The payroll support program was similar to the payroll protection program that was designed to help smaller businesses keep their employees paid during the H1N1 epidemic.

There were some conditions to the federal aid to the airlines, which include the need to use the funds exclusively to pay wages and benefits, and for specific periods of time.

Southwest Airlines During the Pandemic Aid Meltdown in 2020: A Call to Account for the Costs of Employee Pay and Benefits

Gary Kelly, Southwest’s former chief executive officer, said in December of 2021 that it worked.

Funds received through each round of the PSP were only used for salaries, wages and benefits of qualified employees. We did not cut pay rates, we did not reduce hours, we did not lay off personnel, and we did not furlough. We raised our minimum pay from $11 to $15 per hour.

Southwest was in a good situation entering 2020 because of its fiscally conservative approach, and the cost-cutting that happened throughout the P.C. had it on good footing for the future.

Two House Democrats asked the Treasury Department to investigate if any of the funds was used for the buyouts of airline workers as Southwest and other airlines struggled with staffing shortages.

The amounts were calculated based on salary levels for the carriers in 2019. In April 2020, airline passenger traffic plummeted 96% and stayed 60% below 2019 levels in 2020, according to the US Government Accountability Office.

There was no carrier flying in 2019. Several carriers cut hours and pay while saying they wouldn’t be laying off employees. Many others initiated voluntary separation agreements that paid fewer hours and salary dollars over a defined future period in exchange for early retirements or similar.”

He said that it could have been as simple as fuel, interest payments and other overheads. The idea that a carrier would pay for IT upgrades that they didn’t need is not realistic.

“Now that the problem has occurred, and at [the Department of Transportation] and the market’s urging, I suspect the carrier has a different view of what IT upgrades are necessary,” he said. “They’ll spend their own money now to research, develop and implement new systems.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/business/southwest-pandemic-aid-meltdown/index.html

Reply to Sens. Markey and Blumenthal’s “Avoidable” Holiday Annihilations” by Southwest Airlines, a Press Release

Democratic Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut issued a new letter Tuesday calling on Southwest to pay up for what they say were avoidable holiday cancellations.

“After days of trying to operate as much of our full schedule across the busy holiday weekend, we reached a decision point to significantly reduce our flying to catch up,” he said.

Buttigieg in an interview with PBS Newshour described the practices as unacceptable and threatened to hold the airline to its stated intentions.

“We’re going to expect them to go beyond the letter of the law in terms of how they treat passengers, making sure they pay for things like hotels, ground travel expenses, meals and of course, refunds,” Buttigieg said.

People were left to use their own devices. […] He told NPR that they weren’t given the leadership to answer questions, and weren’t given the tools to do their jobs.

The airline industry has been wary of regulations in the past because they put the cost burden on the customer. Southwest is more suited to decide what needs to change than the DOT is.

Congress is also watching whether the airline will compensate customers. Senate Commerce Committee will investigate, its chair said on Tuesday.

Under current DOT rules, any passenger who saw their flight canceled is entitled to a prompt cash refund for the full cost, plus any extra purchases such as bag fees or a seat assignment.

All customers have the option to change their travel plans if they wish, without paying any fees. The company has opened a special self-service portal for processing cash payments.