30%+ of flights on Friday and Saturday before Christmas cancelled. 20% cancelled on Christmas Day. 50% cancelled today, the day after Christmas.

Our family had two flights departing two different airports (LGA and BHM) to HOU cancelled.

No flights have gone from BHM to HOU since Friday the 23. Son is rebooked out of BHM on United tomorrow. Had we been booked on the 140 pm flight out of LGA, we'd be on our way home. Now there is nothing for several days.

No texts or emails about the cancelled flights. App and website are almost completely unusable. Can't even check flight status.

Airline is almost unrecognizable from the one I always trusted back in the day to get me home when Continental and American would throw up their hands in times like this.

Ironically American is now the airline I trust to get things figured out in stressful situations.

This is by far the worst I've seen from them. I've had cancellations or changes before, but I've never been unable to rebook on my own or get through on the phone.

Yes. We've been loyal SW fliers for almost 18 years. This is absolutely awful. And unacceptable that you can't even check the status of your flight on the app.

We gave up and are driving home from NYC. Extended the rental (which surprisingly wasn't too bad).

I'm not even trying to deal with SW right now. I'll call them and get a refund on our tickets when we get home.

My BF's TA rebooked my son on United from BHM to IAH. There was no way we'd have been able to do that without her help.

They're up to 66% cancellations today. I'm flying to Philly on Wednesday and am fairly concerned about that ordeal.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/flight-cancellations-christmas-2022-winter-storm/index.html

We had the inlaws going back to MEM and the niece coming in from MSY. SWA just scrubbed all remaining flights. Blame my neighbor, he called in sick for the week when he saw the weather turning bad.

Currently SWA agents at Dallas Love are telling my inlaws no bags to be returned. Like the good senior citizens they are, all their meds are locked away. Fun times.

When you get that ticket agent or representative on the phone or in person, be kind. Save your anger and twitter at the CEO.

Out of curiosity, has anyone gotten emails or texts about their cancellations? If I hadn't been watching the app like a hawk, we would have gone to the airport and returned the rental car and been royally screwed.

Good luck. I spent some time on the app before it stopped working, and there was nothing available out of Hobby for any of the destinations I checked.

Even if there is any availability over the next three days, I'm sure they have locked everyone out so that agents have options to rebook. When I looked for anything out of LGA, there were no flights until Friday.

Safe travels, hopefully you have flexibility to make a stop in Nashville or somewhere else along the way and have a fun evening.

Thank you. There are 4 potential drivers in the car (I'm with my BF and his 3 teenaged boys). My head is still just spinning from the whole series of events. Trying to coordinate our five tickets, plus my son's (who is another state with his dad), a rental car (that we wound up keeping to drive home), two cats that need medicine, and a dog at doggie daycare was no joke.

I've been pursuing the southwest subreddit and WOW. What a complete disaster.

Flight Aware is showing lots of cancellations out of Denver tomorrow. I imagine that's the situation at all their hubs.

Articles online are saying they couldn't even locate their own crew members stranded over the weekend. Stranded pilots booked their own hotels and FAs slept in break rooms at the airports.

Also read that pilots calling in to get their next flight assignment waited "on hold" for several hours.

We are really lucky that we were cancelled before we left for the airport and could keep the rental van that we already had. I can't imagine being stuck at the airport with 5 people. There is no way we all could have even gotten on the same rescheduled flight.

Take it for what it's worth, but I just read a tweet that said their entire computer system went down. All flights that weren't already in the air were cancelled.

A full system failure happened to us once a few years ago when my son was flying UM. We were in line at the airport early enough that he got a hand written boarding pass with barely enough time to board, but plenty of people behind us waited hours in line only to miss their flight.

20% of Southwest flights cancelled for Tuesday December 27th. Expect more to follow. I imagine they will cancel early AM flights and out of position aircraft hoping to buy time overnight.

My FIL and his wife are flying SWA from HOU to LGA tomorrow at 12:45p. What's the chances that flight takes off on time??

FlightAware has the plane in LAS 3 days ago. Lol.

Just for poops and giggles, I checked flightaware for DEN to IAH tomorrow. Two of three SW flights have already been cancelled, in addition to the 10 pm flight tonight.

TopFlightReject said:

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My FIL and his wife are flying SWA from HOU to LGA tomorrow at 12:45p. What's the chances that flight takes off on time??

FlightAware has the plane in LAS 3 days ago. Lol.

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Just checked FlightAware and the earlier HOU to LGA flight doesn't even show up anymore. Uh oh

TopFlightReject said:

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My FIL and his wife are flying SWA from HOU to LGA tomorrow at 12:45p. What's the chances that flight takes off on time??

FlightAware has the plane in LAS 3 days ago. Lol.

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According to flightaware The 720 am flight has already been canceled.

TXTransplant said:

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TopFlightReject said:

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My FIL and his wife are flying SWA from HOU to LGA tomorrow at 12:45p. What's the chances that flight takes off on time??

FlightAware has the plane in LAS 3 days ago. Lol.

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The 720 am flight has already been canceled.

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Yup just saw that.

They just announced no rebookings can be accommodated before Dec 31. Are people just stuck where they are until then? How do they even go about getting the bags piled up at Love Field to their owners? What a meltdown!

It just keeps getting better…

https://www.instagram.com/p/CmpocJESG5_/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

2wealfth Man said:

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They just announced no rebookings can be accommodated before Dec 31. Are people just stuck where they are until then? How do they even go about getting the bags piled up at Love Field to their owners. What a meltdown!

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They need to be putting people on other airlines at this point. There are going to be some seats available on other airlines, depending on the airport.

TXTransplant said:

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2wealfth Man said:

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They just announced no rebookings can be accommodated before Dec 31. Are people just stuck where they are until then? How do they even go about getting the bags piled up at Love Field to their owners. What a meltdown!

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They need to be putting people on other airlines at this point. There are going to be some seats available on other airlines, depending on the airport.

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I am sure their systems can't accommodate that, they can't even manage crew schedules/ logistics at this point.

ETA: their technology has failed on multiple levels at this point; crew management, call center, booking engine…..rely on it at your own risk

2wealfth Man said:

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TXTransplant said:

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2wealfth Man said:

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They just announced no rebookings can be accommodated before Dec 31. Are people just stuck where they are until then? How do they even go about getting the bags piled up at Love Field to their owners. What a meltdown!

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They need to be putting people on other airlines at this point. There are going to be some seats available on other airlines, depending on the airport.

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I am sure their systems can't accommodate that, they can't even manage crew schedules/ logistics at this point.

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Right. That explains why no one got cancellation emails or texts.

It's what they ~should~ do, but I realize they probably can't. If you don't have a TA to help you, you're prob not getting through to any airline at this point. We waited on hold 20+ min to get a human at Budget to change our rental reservation. Website wouldn't allow me to change it online.

2800 cancelled flights, just for today.

143-175 passengers per flight.

That's 400k - 490k stranded passengers, not including the ones stranded by the cancellations over the weekend.

Assuming a ticket price of $300, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $135 million in refunds.

Wonder what a software upgrade would have cost?

A little birdie told me their systems crashed today; hence the mass cancellations (sheds more light on the no rebooking before Dec 31 issue). The weekend was due to weather but the systems buckled today under the stress. Full IT reboot followed by trying to get the flight network up and running. BTW, more weather heading towards the East Coast.

Yep. I posted above that I saw the same thing on Twitter. Crew comms systems crashed, too, supposedly.

My dad was flying HOU to SAN last Thursday on SWA. They were late leaving Hobby due to pilot swap and SAN got foggy. They diverted to LAX and after a few hours canceled the flight and left everyone stranded at midnight. Since it was weather, no compensation or support offered.

Luckily it was just a few hour drive for us to get him the next day.

Pro Sandy said:

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My dad was flying HOU to SAN last Thursday on SWA. They were late leaving Hobby due to pilot swap and SAN got foggy. They diverted to LAX and after a few hours canceled the flight and left everyone stranded at midnight. Since it was weather, no compensation or support offered.

Luckily it was just a few hour drive for us to get him the next day.

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they have stopped all operations at SAN for the time being; nothing in or out.

2wealfth Man said:

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Pro Sandy said:

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My dad was flying HOU to SAN last Thursday on SWA. They were late leaving Hobby due to pilot swap and SAN got foggy. They diverted to LAX and after a few hours canceled the flight and left everyone stranded at midnight. Since it was weather, no compensation or support offered.

Luckily it was just a few hour drive for us to get him the next day.

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they have stopped all operations at SAN for the time being; nothing in or out.

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Just saw that... Have my dad and daughter flying out of SAN tomorrow on SWA. One to HOU then CRP, the other to AUS then BWI.

Well, I mean they aren't doing any of that now...

Just got my cancellation email! Only 5.5 hours late!

I hate this for anyone traveling with them. I only had one set of clients traveling by flights this week and thank goodness got them to Costa Rica yesterday. All my travel agent friends are having to cancel vacations right and left, on top of lost luggage by SW.

This made us laugh!

Introducing Wanna Stay Home™️ - Southwest Airlines newest “no-cost” fare offering.

"Wanna be stranded at airport"? That costs extra!#SouthwestAirlines #southwestair #flightcancellations pic.twitter.com/zUz3JqSi7z

— Common Raccoon (@MeCommonRaccoon) December 26, 2022

Sad to see this happen to what was once a very well operated airline. I am glad I made the choice to switch airlines with my cc points. Not sure when I will get around to using our 250+k SW miles, but it won't be for any trips we actually need to get somewhere on time.