A punishing winter storm that dumped multiple feet of snow across much of America led to widespread flight cancellations over the Christmas holiday, most of them on Southwest Airlines. Southwest warned that it would continue canceling flights until it could get its operations back on track. The company’s CEO said this has been the biggest disruption he’s seen in his career. The Biden administration is investigating.
#CNN #News
Hear what Southwest CEO is saying about flight cancellations
Staff says the IT systems are the issue and staff is sitting around waiting
The logistical technology doesn’t update when a delay or cancelation occurs, so it’s manually updated by IT. The employee has to call IT and put a ticket in to change their location every time this occurs. It’s old computer software from the 90s. Most airlines have updated it by now. SW is a holdout. I’m guessing that there’s a lot of people who just can’t get through to get a ticket in, let alone be updated to their current location.
@Christina Cody and I’ll bet “IT” is based overseas
@manonamission2000 I have a cousin who works for SWA IT, and he is in Kansas City, MO.
@manonamission2000 Not always the case. In fact its still a largely us field. Now customer service on the other hand…
I’m assuming you know that IT=Information Technology (aka computer science).
@Christina Cody Corporations cut costs by outsourcing their IT operations (I’m assuming you understand) and in most cases the staff performing the actual technical work is based out of India. Their processes depend on helpdesk ticketing systems to track work done.
If LUV is using this approach to manage reservation updates and staffing assignments, it may explain what folks are seeing at airports across the country
Betting the CEO was able to get home for the holidays.
Bootyjudge wasn’t on vacation,and still did nothing. On the bright side,he is still gay,which qualifies him for the job!!!!!
@David Eby – you expecting him to go fly the planes himself? 🙄
@CCJJ160Channels No, I expect him to do his job. I understand how you wokies are against work,but that is his job,Corky.
@David Eby – seeing as he’s trying to get people where they need to go and making sure they’re reimbursed that sounds like he’s doing his job of a secretary of transportation.
Yah in his private jet.
This is what happens when an airline relies on 100% utilization of crew and aircraft as part of normal day to day operations. There’s no room for error… there’s also no way to easily rebound with no spare crew or aircraft.
The reason why Southwest is struggling more is due to its rapid expansion. It’s essentially a hub-less airline. Instead, Southwest simply dominates in underserved airports.
😠 Fuk John J what you saying here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3LwF5PfFw
Falar com O Sr. António é como viajar no tempo, é sonhar acordado, é uma lição de
What’s crazy. It that every airline knows that every year. The same season people travel heavily, and they didn’t seem prepared.
The COO just admitted that it was the internal failings of the company and not the weather. This is important as all other airlines are operation with very few (minimal) cancellations if any despite the “weather.” At least this Andrew guy is being honest, don’t expect him to last at the company since he has contradicted the CEO.
😠 Fuk B T what you saying here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3LwF5PfFw
Falar com O Sr. António é como viajar no tempo, é sonhar acordado, é uma lição de
It was started by weather though
Southwest should be booking their customers on other flights and covering the cost directly instead of waiting for the customer to submit for a refund.
Southwest has a proprietary reservation system and no interline agreements with other carriers to match you with another flight.
I have a friend effected by this and she has been rescheduled on another airline at no charge and has submitted for a refund.
@TikiHi77 Yeah I call Bullshit. NO airline flies anyone at no charge.
Bidens administration fails at everything!!! Pete Bootyjudge might be gay,but sadly that doesn’t make him smart!! Who knew,Gomer?
They can’t
I used to be a huge fan of SW airlines. Not so much anymore. Step son was due to fly back from Phoenix to San Diego the afternoon before Christmas; after several delays the flight was cancelled altogether. They refused to give him a hotel voucher, claiming it was “weather related”, which was a joke since the ticketing agent said they had located a crew minus a couple flight attendants. He finally said screw it, and rented a one-way car and drove home. $400 and 6.5 hrs later, he made it at 11:30pm Christmas Eve. He was one of the lucky ones 😔.
😠 Fuk calown what you saying here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3LwF5PfFw
Falar com O Sr. António é como viajar no tempo, é sonhar acordado, é uma lição de
If they were minus 1 flight attendant then they cant go, FAA requires minimum crew on board before the airline is even allowed to board. Having said that, Southwest has their schedules so tight that one thunderstorm can cause a ripple effect, its not like Southwest has a price advantage like they used to
Same. These arseholes flew my family members to DIA for a connecting flight knowing that they’ve been canceling them all for days. They literally intentionally stranded my siblings at DIA and canceled all flights til the new year. Had they of known SWA was canceling flights out of DIA for days, they wouldn’t have gotten on the plane to DIA. This debacle cost us THOUSANDS as we had to put them up in hotels capitalizing on all the stranded travelers ($400 a night for a 3 star hotel, really?!?) and flights on other airlines since stranding them in an overpriced hotel was unacceptable.
THOUSANDS.
None of us will ever be booking through Southwest again. Not even Spirit has done us this dirty. Their luggage won’t make it to their vacation destination til the last day of their trip.
I still like SWA. I was screwed over much worse by the late NW Airlines, and was stranded for over 24 hours in the Minneapolis airport, not for bad weather, but because a bridge collapsed. They held our plane in PDX, on the tarmac for 3 hours, so that I missed my connection. They rebooked me on the next flight to Philly, then cleared all the seat assignments, so I had to wait for the *next* flight, 24 hours later.
Same thing happened to me. I got stuck in Miami for 3 days. They at first said it was the fact that they didn’t have enough pilots and crew, until they eventually blamed it on weather. They didn’t give any of us hotel vouchers. I tried to rent a car but everyone else had the same idea and all the cars were gone. I eventually had to take an uber up to Orlando ($300)
Southwest needs to start by hiring coach buses and get people on the buses for one regional airports to another. I rather be inside a bus for 8 hours than being stuck inside an airport for days.
It is disingenuous how Southwest management went about implementing what basically amounts to the deliberate shut down of their operations. Southwest management made a plan to deliberately cancel flights, but they don’t let passengers know whether their flight is canceled until a few hours before departure. By waiting until the last minute to inform passengers, Southwest deprives passengers of critical time to put in place alternate arrangements – there is no excess capacity at any of the airlines right now so every minute helps. Southwest management apparently maintains information asymmetry with passengers about which flights they will keep and which they will cancel. It appears that Southwest’s management is trying to hold on to every last fare until the last possible minute with the foresight that they will be abandoning most of their customers with very few options. It is clear that their operation is out of control, but they seem to know that they must cancel flights to get it back into control. If they came forward with a transparent plan of exactly what flights they needed to cut over the next several days and assistance with food and lodging for those they know they will displace, their customers would have more certainty in their lives even if they are disappointed about their flights. The way the executives at Southwest have gone about solving this problem is terrible and it has been at the expense of both their customers and employees.
They have to make that split decision before departure to cancel it because usually they don’t know it’s going to be canceled until the flight is about to leave
They also didn’t deliberately cancel the flights they did it for safety, I do admit that they had some unesasary cancellations but you probably wouldn’t want to be in 50 inches of snow, also they didn’t want to ruin there planes or for something to go wrong and there planes to malfunction and crash because if a plane get frozen or a part does that can jack up the whole plane and crash and I don’t think you or anybody want to be in a plane crash
My son was notified by SWA days before his Dec 21 LAX-Seattle flight that he could reschedule for same $90—he did that twice then finally canceled and drove.
You get what you pay for
@Philip Richard It was not for safety. Did the storm just cause SW to cancel 2000+ flight for six days straight while all the other airlines got up and running in two days? The weather just effect SW then? Must be a Sucksworst Employee
Oh my God, this is insane! And I heard that Southwest is renting a good part of the new gates in Denver international airport at terminal C, and to be honest, it is very sad that this is all going on! Such a good airline to go down, like this means that the administration never cared and were too conservative in business practice to want to upgrade their technology to better assist everyone especially a committed crew of flight attendants, and also loyal passengers. It’s going to be hard for a lot of people now to trust Southwest airlines and Southwest airlines better have a better explanation because I think they realize now that with social media people are able to communicate better all of the BS going on, so that means that they really really really need to get it together if they want to be back on top!
😠 Fuk Christine Perivancich what you saying here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3LwF5PfFw
Falar com O Sr. António é como viajar no tempo, é sonhar acordado, é uma lição de
I smell a huge class action suit coming quick. SW has known for years that they needed to update their systems and technology and now whom ever was trying to cash in on the profits instead of upgrading the airline is going to lose and bankrupt the airline. Some businesses have to learn the hard way. Unfortunately it was at the customers expense. Praying for the guest on the loss of her dad and everyone affected by this monstrosity.
Yea I know I’m kinda worried cause my dad is a a SWA employee and I hope they don’t go bankrupted because I hope he can keep his job, I mainly the crews fault because there asses don’t want to come to work so they just stay at home and cause all these cancelations, but also I don’t think they would go bankrupted
I don’t think people realize the scale of this. We are used to normal chatter about holiday travel hassles, but this is unprecedented, we tried to fly to San Francisco but got stuck at our layover stop in Las Vegas. After Three rescheduled flights were cancelled we decided to drive on Monday, but found that no cars were available at any of the rental agencies. We ended up driving 600 miles in a 15’ uhaul truck…. Not ideal but 11 hour drive was way more fun then the 16 hours we spent waiting at airport. We bought socks and underwear at Walgreens today. Maybe SW will get our luggage to us someday.
😠 Fuk Copernicus what you saying here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3LwF5PfFw
Falar com O Sr. António é como viajar no tempo, é sonhar acordado, é uma lição de
To all the airline geeks reading this, do you think Southwest Airlines’ business model as a low-cost/stand-alone airline is still sustainable in today’s aviation environment? As explained on another report, they can’t rebook their passengers on other airlines because they don’t have an interline agreement with them. Genuinely curious.
😠 Fuk Fly By what you saying here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3LwF5PfFw
Falar com O Sr. António é como viajar no tempo, é sonhar acordado, é uma lição de
The CEO of Southwest doesn’t care, he makes $9M a year and lives comfortably, unlike most of the passengers unfortunate enough to fly Southwest.
😠 Fuk PhoenixDemocrat what you saying here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3LwF5PfFw
Falar com O Sr. António é como viajar no tempo, é sonhar acordado, é uma lição de
My sister was stranded at the Orlando, Florida airport on December 26. Southwest staff does not want to show their faces, nor do they want to assist passengers. My sister had to rent hotel rooms, take taxis and buy plane tickets from another airline and they don’t want to refund all the money she has had to spend due to the gross negligence of that airline and the US Department of Transportation. When she was able to reach Southwest Customer Service, and she told them she had to get back to work, they told them… “That’s a good excuse (being stranded at an airport) to miss work. They’re scoundrels and they have no empathy. They didn’t let people know about cancellations.
😠 Fuk Roberto Negrón what you saying here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS3LwF5PfFw
Falar com O Sr. António é como viajar no tempo, é sonhar acordado, é uma lição de
That’s terrible. Horrible to hear no support. Thanks for sharing this info.
Yeah, yeah, Heard that before, not flying which ever airline but the next time you need or want to travel you’ll buy the cheapest ticket no matter which airline. I fly only United airlines, short notice only, pay more but avoid issues.
That’s the thing things like this means a bigger bonus for the top because they wanted more profit profit means ripping off others. There’s no such thing as fair value anymore. In fact it’s always the wealthy people the wealthy companies are always going to make a profit they’re never going to be in the negative because of their own mismanagement errors or ignorance
When the fines are less than the profits made from something like this it means this is going to continue to happen because it’s more profitable to screw up than it is to do the correct job
This CEO and the COO, along with other high executives need to resign. This is an airline I feel great loyalty to but this is just unacceptable and quite frankly I’m afraid to fly them now. This is the airline of “friendliness” but that’s not the airline I see. It’s just totally unacceptable.
It is clear to me that Southwest knew they wouldn’t have the available staff and continued to sell tickets. They were greatful for the bad weather to use it as an excuse for cancellations. THEY SHOULD BE FINED HEAVILY…..AND UTILIZE THEIR LIST TO BEGIN REIMBURSEMENT OF TICKETS……THEY NEED TO CALL COSTUMERS NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!!!!!!💯💯💯💯