Unofficial SWA holiday meltdown thread

[dixiehack]

Thank Christ I’m not caught up in this mess. But a former co-worker is now departing San Diego in her rental car (that they thankfully extended and updated) for a 16-hour journey home to Oregon with two young daughters in tow.

I’ve not seen much of the news and didn’t realize virtually the whole schedule for them was shredded.

Why Southwest is melting down | CNN Business

About 87% of Tuesday's US flight cancellations are Southwest, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Southwest canceled more than 2,500 flights. The next highest: Spirit Airlines, with 83.

 

[HanSenSE]

Reading the link above, having a helluva time working up sympathy for Southwest, especially when most of the other airlines are having minimal interruptions.

 

[MileHigh]

Glad I was nowhere near an airport the past week.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

Southwest's suits are asking each other, "Wanna get away?"

You are now NOT free to move around the country.

 

[TigerVols]

I had about a half-dozen family members had to cancel a trip from two east coast cities to San Diego that had been planned months ago for today thru next week, because SWA screwed both groups. Hard to imagine the ramifications for other businesses that are touched by SWA customers.

 

[User 149557]

Southwest is a lesson in you can have two of fast, cheap and good, but never all three.

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

I was reading that the Southwest scheduling software is at least 20 years old and had to fall back on making schedules manually due to the storm. Management is at the Find Out part of not investing enough in staffing.

 

[Roscablo]

I am a pretty loyal Southwest customer. They go practically everywhere and using Denver as my airport I can get a direct flight almost everywhere. They have been super easy to make changes, which I have done a few times, and they hold to the not charging you fees to do so, and I have even gotten money back at times when the new flight has been cheaper. And honestly, the no bag fees just makes things easier. I don't love the boarding, but you get used to it, and they usually are in and out fast. The being able to use the flight credits infinitely is also nice, and I had some that expired from COVID around the time they made that decision and I still got to use them.

My brother-in-law is a pilot with United and we used to be very loyal because of it (and got to use standby as well), but I have had a bad experience in some way almost every time with United. I never really did with Southwest. Got stuck on a runway for two hours in September, but it wasn't their fault.

That said, all of those benefits have probably in some way exploded into this. It also isn't the first time this year this has happened. It's at least the second, and I have seen third or fourth. It is just magnified like crazy because of the holidays. They probably will get their schedule back on track, but it is tough not to see this at the very least happening at least a few times a year, and at worst blowing up their airline and/or business model. This is PR that everyone sees. They can't just apologize and move on. Having a vacation potentially ruined will be on the backs of everyone's minds for a long time.

 

[qtlaw]

Before this, I’ve always thought SWA was the most reliable but that was going up and down West Coast and to Houston.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

Southwest is good at routes, but does not use a hub and spoke system like Delta and American do. They are more like Greyhound with wings.

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

Holy crap. Did Southwest get their computer systems from Radio Shack?

 

[Dyno]

I have two friends stranded, along with their families. Neither group is flying SWA. One group is stuck in San Francisco. The earliest they can get a flight back to DC is on Thursday (they were supposed to fly this morning). The other group is in Taos, trying to get back to Austin. The earliest they could fly back is 1/2! They rented a car and are making the 11 hour drive back. What a ****show.

 

[MileHigh]

My aunt and uncle are stranded in Denver heading back into the atmospheric river of SFO, so I'll be able to see them in the next day or two.

 

[playthrough]

Holy crap. Did Southwest get their computer systems from Radio Shack?

Seems like this comes up every few years with some airline, having antiquated software that finally comes back to bite them. Wonder how its gets updated without shutting down the entire operation for a day or so.

 

[I Should Coco]

Not an expert, but it seems to me that Southwest rigidly stacks its flights with an hour or less turnaround, with crews often doubling back on return routes (say, Phoenix to Seattle and back to Phoenix, with a stop or two in between). So if there’s a delay anywhere during that rigid schedule, things go downhill fast.

Again, every airline probably does this type of scheduling to an extent … but they all faced the same weather system on Christmas weekend, and the rest of the airlines aren’t nearly as screwed up today.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

Like I said, SWA is built on routes, so if one route gets screwed up, it jacks up other connecting routes and it cascades outward from there. Including Dallas to El Paso.

 

[HanSenSE]

Sign seen at Denver airport (via CNN):
Why is covid better than Southwest?
Because it's airborne.

 

[FileNotFound]

All three of my kids got caught in the Southwest fiasco on their visit to their mom in Florida for the holidays. Two of them ended up getting home via Allegiant, but one is stuck in Florida, apparently indefinitely.

 

[garrow]

My youngest sister and her husband got here on Southwest without a problem (before Christmas) but their flight to his hometown (Memphis) was canceled. Thankfully, they were able to book a new flight via American.

 

[Driftwood]

I don't fly much anymore, but I've never had a bad experience on Delta, and I've never had a good experience on American, which is a shame because I always had good experiences with USAir until it was bought by American.

 

[FileNotFound]

When I flew mostly domestic, I flew mostly Southwest, and generally had good experiences with them. But I can attest to the fact that when it starts going bad for Southwest, it goes really bad really fast. There is not a lot of “give” in their operation.

 

[Azrael]

Emirates

Lufthansa

Jet Blue

Other internationals

Southwest

Other domestics






























Spirit