SW should be allowed to propose its own compensation plan before the idiots in DC get involved.

I've been entertaining myself by reading Southwest-trending tweets. For every legit issue (being stranded, stuck in an airport for days, missing bags, etc), there is someone screaming about how pissed they will be if/when their flight to spend NYE in NYC is cancelled.

I get the disappointment of having a vacation cancelled, but these customers shouldn't expect anything more than refund of their original airfare and maybe some vouchers for their trouble.

There really should be a hierarchy of handling and processing these claims, and I wouldn't even put myself at the top of that list after everything it's taken to get the 6 of us home.

Edited to add: I was ready to spit fire yesterday when our flights were cancelled, I couldn't get through on the phone, and the app and website were down. My BF had to talk me down off the anger ledge. But I've mellowed since then. Knowing how extensive and just BAD this was, I have no desire to take anyone to task over it. Just refund what I paid for the original tickets and what it cost to get us home. And for the love of all that's holy, upgrade the mother effin system!

I am flying from HOU to LIH on 12/30, I can find no other flights on other airlines, should I just get a rental car instead?

Elroy75 said:

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I am flying from HOU to LIH on 12/30, I can find no other flights on other airlines, should I just get a rental car instead?

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Yacht rental?

Elroy75 said:

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I am flying from HOU to LIH on 12/30, I can find no other flights on other airlines, should I just get a rental car instead?

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Lihue Airport? I hear it's a nice drive, but watch it once you past LA. Road floods easily.

LIH? You'd be better off renting a boat. Maybe try flying to another island and taking a hop.

Good points will consider, Thanks!

Yes I debated this briefly but was scrambling to try and make the flight arrangements. The flights were nearly $2k a pop cash price so I bit the bullet and burned miles vs shelling out $4k.

I'm hoping with time, SW makes some attempt to make things right. I am also potentially having to pay for a night of a hotel we won't use since we were inside the hotel cancellation period when SW cancelled the flight.

My husband and 7 year old daughter are flying at the end of January to Steamboat via SW. Luckily the flight there is through DAL but coming home is always through DEN. Last year it was a disaster. Hopefully no storms come through and they have their act together in a month!

What of the people who weren't able to get to their hotels or resorts and are out an entire night of non-refundable costs? It isn't inconsequential.

Or who may have had other non-refundable costs?

We've had fishing trips before the following day that were $1400/boat which we book 6 months in advance. Or resorts that are $500-$700/night.

These happen often long before this and have always happened, but it sucks that airlines claim no ownership of their goof.

evan_aggie said:

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What of the people who weren't able to get to their hotels or resorts and are out an entire night of non-refundable costs? It isn't inconsequential.

Or who may have had other non-refundable costs?

We've had fishing trips before the following day that were $1400/boat which we book 6 months in advance. Or resorts that are $500-$700/night.

These happen often long before this and have always happened, but it sucks that airlines claim no ownership of their goof.

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While this was an incident of epic proportions, it's not unheard of for a vacation flight to be cancelled. I think we agree on that point. If you've pre-paid or booked non-refundable hotels, rental cars, and excursions, that's what travel insurance is for.

I travel on expensive vacations all the time. If I want to be sure I don't lose money on the trip because my flights are cancelled, I buy insurance.

If Covid taught us anything about "safe" travel, it was buy trip insurance…or self-insure.

Just because this was a major screw up on Southwest's part doesn't absolve travelers from the responsibility of booking trip insurance (for non-flight travel expenses) and the trip insurance companies from paying out those claims. That's just the way the system works.

Like I said above, for those people whose flight was cancelled the day before or more, a refund of the original ticket price and vouchers are acceptable compensation, IMO. If people want more, they can take it up with their credit card company (many cards have trip insurance built in) or their insurance company (if they bought any).

I can't concede that the hundreds of thousands of passengers who have been stranded at airports since Christmas Eve with no way home until (maybe) New Years deserve the same compensation as someone who had a flight to Hawaii booked that was cancelled two days in advance. And regardless of the amount of notice given, after yesterday, it became crystal clear that no one should be expecting to travel anywhere on Southwest until after the new year. So even if your flight wasn't officially cancelled, you should have been proactively working on plan B.

How does trip insurance cover forced PTO due to a screwup like this?

Skywalker18 said:

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How does trip insurance cover forced PTO due to a screwup like this?

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That's a totally separate issue that was not included in the post I replied to. And it likely wouldn't be covered by trip insurance because that's not what trip insurance is for.

I agree, the lost work time is a HUGE issue. I don't off-hand have a good solution for that, and it really does complicate things.

It sucks, but ultimately that's why we decided to take things into our own hands and book a flight on another airline for my son and pay the rental fee to drive the rest of us 24 hours home to HOU from NYC. It became very clear within a couple of hours yesterday that we were completely on our own and Southwest wasn't going to be able to help us. It's not fair, and my first instinct was to yell with righteous indignation. But that didn't solve the problem.

We are very fortunate to 1) have already had a rental car and 2) have been able to afford the extra costs. I don't take that for granted, and I empathize with people who did not have that option. But it was every man for himself yesterday. For various reasons, we knew we didn't have the option to hang around NYC for an extra 3 or more days.

Totally agree with you. We were blessed to get a last minute rental in Houston yesterday evening and made the drive back to Denver last night and this morning. Regardless, I had to take a day off work for the drive. Have a baby boy due in July so it's pretty upsetting that they are digging into my saved PTO that was supposed to be for our first child. Just a nightmare all the way around…

Yep, my son's dad was in the same boat. The closest airport is 1.5 hours away. He had yesterday off but was planning to work today. Since the airport is so far away and the flight was at 11, he had to take the whole day off. I felt bad for him.

I was going to WFH today and Friday. Thankfully I can just work tomorrow or Thursday instead.

TXTransplant said:

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SW should be allowed to propose its own compensation plan before the idiots in DC get involved.

I've been entertaining myself by reading Southwest-trending tweets. For every legit issue (being stranded, stuck in an airport for days, missing bags, etc), there is someone screaming about how pissed they will be if/when their flight to spend NYE in NYC is cancelled.

I get the disappointment of having a vacation cancelled, but these customers shouldn't expect anything more than refund of their original airfare and maybe some vouchers for their trouble.

There really should be a hierarchy of handling and processing these claims, and I wouldn't even put myself at the top of that list after everything it's taken to get the 6 of us home.

Edited to add: I was ready to spit fire yesterday when our flights were cancelled, I couldn't get through on the phone, and the app and website were down. My BF had to talk me down off the anger ledge. But I've mellowed since then. Knowing how extensive and just BAD this was, I have no desire to take anyone to task over it. Just refund what I paid for the original tickets and what it cost to get us home. And for the love of all that's holy, upgrade the mother effin system!

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I agree but I think they should be followed closely. 1) this isn't the first cluster**** from southwest. Obviously people have a short memory and we're just back to normal a couple days later. 2) southwest already starting to throw out weather as the reason even though it seems blatantly obvious it's a system issue….."the storm has crippled our operations."

As a former business traveler, I never fly southwest for a few reasons. First, I I absolutely hate layovers and seems every leisure trip I'd want to make has layovers. So just never seemed worth it to build points as the leisure options were never as convenient as United.

Two, in my business travel I had 3 trips with southwest. On two I was stranded, both in Denver, and had to get a hotel for an extra night and they wouldn't compensate me at all because of their canned "weather" excuse. These were absolutely normal days and no other flights were cancelled.

Something that seems to be a common element in several of southwests meltdowns (large and small) is that cancellations caused at least in part by a large number of gate agents out sick in Denver has played a part. Is it just bad management/bad employees there? Or is there some glitch in their contract that is causing strain there? Sounds like that Dec 21 memo to their employees there was the last straw before a bunch of people get fired.

One thing I've noticed in doing business with Southwest, especially since Covid, is I don't think the airport employees have the authority or even presence of mind to help when the poop hits the fan. I think these agents (particularly at the gate) are trained to do one thing and one thing only: get people on planes. When they can't do that, everything breaks down fast.

When a plane is delayed or cancelled, paxs' first instinct is to go to the to the ticket counter and start demanding things. Really, all they should be expecting is for an agent to rebook them (if that's a viable solution) EVEN if it means the pax pays something to make that happen. Better yet, rebook yourself.

Then sort it all out when your trip is over via email with the corporate customer service reps. I've always found the phone reps to be much more friendly, patient, and helpful than the airport staff.

I realize this is hard for a lot of people. Especially with this last event - they wanted SW to "fix it". But that wasn't even an option - for a whole bunch of reasons.

But in this day and age, you just don't get very far going up to a desk or gate agent at the airport (if there even is one) and demanding vouchers or hotel rooms or money or whatever. I just don't think those employees have the authority to do that anymore.

I'm not trying to justify that approach. It's just the way things are, and unless there is a big change, I think the better option is to just get from point A to point B as best you can and then settle up the money/credits/refunds/vouchers later over the phone or email.

And that should have been the message, whether verbal or by email or text, given to every passenger over the last few days: "We deeply apologize but this situation is more complicated than what our gate/ticketing agents can solve. If your situation is urgent, your best option is to book with another airline or find alternate transportation to your destination. Save your receipts and we will sort this all out when you get home."

It sucks, but it may have been the blunt approach that some paxs needed to take matters into their own hands.

I do think airport staff are probably trained with a "script" to give to unhappy/disgruntled paxs that deflects blame to something out of the employee's control in order to avoid confrontations between angry paxs and staff (ie, blame it on the weather). But none of us believe those stories anymore and they just make a bad situation worse.

Travel insurance! That's a very good point. I've never bought it because I honestly thought it's a bit of a scam but sounds like it'd come handy in times like these.

I always wondered how much fighting would be required to cover your real costs or if they have limits. I'll read more closely.

Good info and you're probably mostly right, but again, and this is not directed at you, but I don't think most SWA passengers are the most travel savvy.

TXTransplant said:

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SW should be allowed to propose its own compensation plan before the idiots in DC get involved.

I've been entertaining myself by reading Southwest-trending tweets. For every legit issue (being stranded, stuck in an airport for days, missing bags, etc), there is someone screaming about how pissed they will be if/when their flight to spend NYE in NYC is cancelled.

I get the disappointment of having a vacation cancelled, but these customers shouldn't expect anything more than refund of their original airfare and maybe some vouchers for their trouble.

There really should be a hierarchy of handling and processing these claims, and I wouldn't even put myself at the top of that list after everything it's taken to get the 6 of us home.

Edited to add: I was ready to spit fire yesterday when our flights were cancelled, I couldn't get through on the phone, and the app and website were down. My BF had to talk me down off the anger ledge. But I've mellowed since then. Knowing how extensive and just BAD this was, I have no desire to take anyone to task over it. Just refund what I paid for the original tickets and what it cost to get us home. And for the love of all that's holy, upgrade the mother effin system!

---

I don't agree. The reason I don't agree is this is a failure of epic proportions at the corporate level. This isn't just a lack of employees. This isn't act of god weather. This is southwest, the company, failing at multiple levels and canceling things DAYS in advance because of their incompetence. Which then has a cascading affect on their passengers, their employees, airport staff, etc. There is an opportunity cost when choosing an airline. Sometimes **** happens and our vacations get affected or messed up. I agree we all take that gamble. But this is beyond a "**** happens" situation, and Southwest's CONTINUED insistence of "weather" to avoid automatic compensation for messed up travel (which they have done multiple times since COVID despite it being internal issues) is an even bigger issue.

So I don't necessarily think they deserve the right to dictate this themselves. I think they do need to be investigated. I think there needs to be serious oversight of any compensation that is doled out. And I'm saying this as someone who was not affected by the SWA debacle of 2022.

Southwest gets **** on but the reality is this happened to all airlines over the past week. And the further reality is there aren't enough employees to keep flights running on schedule yet we are told it is because of bad weather. The airlines are now a government institution that can't function. United completely wrecked our family's travel plans just like multiple airlines, including Southwest, contributed to ruining hundreds of thousands of people's Christmas. This will quite possibly be the last commercial flight travel I do. It has been that miserable. For 10 days. I'm now on another delayed flight and looking to drive a Uhaul from Denver to San Antonio in 2 hours when we land. The whole industry is understaffed but they continue to book at fully staffed levels and there is no consumer protection because of "weather". Too big to fail. I'm sorry for all who had a bad experience over this Christmas. Hopefully you were as lucky as I was to at least have a wife or a husband or a son or a daughter that was stranded with you and you could make the most of it.

TXTransplant said:

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One thing I've noticed in doing business with Southwest, especially since Covid, is I don't think the airport employees have the authority or even presence of mind to help when the poop hits the fan. I think these agents (particularly at the gate) are trained to do one thing and one thing only: get people on planes. When they can't do that, everything breaks down fast.

When a plane is delayed or cancelled, paxs' first instinct is to go to the to the ticket counter and start demanding things. Really, all they should be expecting is for an agent to rebook them (if that's a viable solution) EVEN if it means the pax pays something to make that happen. Better yet, rebook yourself.

Then sort it all out when your trip is over via email with the corporate customer service reps. I've always found the phone reps to be much more friendly, patient, and helpful than the airport staff.

I realize this is hard for a lot of people. Especially with this last event - they wanted SW to "fix it". But that wasn't even an option - for a whole bunch of reasons.

But in this day and age, you just don't get very far going up to a desk or gate agent at the airport (if there even is one) and demanding vouchers or hotel rooms or money or whatever. I just don't think those employees have the authority to do that anymore.

I'm not trying to justify that approach. It's just the way things are, and unless there is a big change, I think the better option is to just get from point A to point B as best you can and then settle up the money/credits/refunds/vouchers later over the phone or email.

And that should have been the message, whether verbal or by email or text, given to every passenger over the last few days: "We deeply apologize but this situation is more complicated than what our gate/ticketing agents can solve. If your situation is urgent, your best option is to book with another airline or find alternate transportation to your destination. Save your receipts and we will sort this all out when you get home."

It sucks, but it may have been the blunt approach that some paxs needed to take matters into their own hands.

I do think airport staff are probably trained with a "script" to give to unhappy/disgruntled paxs that deflects blame to something out of the employee's control in order to avoid confrontations between angry paxs and staff (ie, blame it on the weather). But none of us believe those stories anymore and they just make a bad situation worse.

---

Back in June 21, I was told exactly the opposite when they cancelled our 6pm flight at 8am in the morning. I asked about hotel/meal vouchers or covering the extra day of rental car and was told that the gate agent at the airport had the most power to give those out and that they couldn't do it over the phone. Since we were flying from Montrose to Houston via Denver and the Denver to Houston leg was the part that was cancelled, we decided to stay the night in Fruita rather than fly to Denver and try to get a hotel there. Since we didn't fly to Denver and then take it up with the agent there at the time, they refused to give us anything. They also claimed it was a weather related delay, even though there were other SW flights leaving Denver and other SW flights arriving in Houston at the same time and weather was clear at both airports.

No, it didn't happen to all the airlines. They all had issues for about 1.5-2 days due to terrible weather across the country. They rebooked passengers and were able to give accurate status updates as changes were made. Southwest is going to be nearly shut down for a week and can't do any rebooking or give status updates in the meantime. Their entire system melted down, both at the IT level and at the staffing level. They have been nearly unable to function as an airline for multiple days. They deserve to be **** on for that because they have failed their passengers at every level and it isn't because of the weather.

You are correct that Southwest led the pack and deserves to get **** on. My point is that I've flown all of them and been through generational loyalty programs, including Southwest and United. When they catch you it sucks. I stand by my claim that the airline industry as a whole is understaffed for what they are booking. It is obvious on just about every flight taken. They all deserve to be **** on, but maybe Southwest deserves a double dose this go around.

DP

Learning that the Southwest Airlines meltdown is due to an antiquated crew scheduling system that assumes where a crew member is instead of working off live flight data. They’ve lost track of almost every crew member and the only way to solve it is…

— Ben (@JustAnother_Ben) December 27, 2022

Quote:

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Learning that the Southwest Airlines meltdown is due to an antiquated crew scheduling system that assumes where a crew member is instead of working off live flight data. They've lost track of almost every crew member and the only way to solve it is…

for each one to individually call scheduling to tell them where they are. Their phone lines are swamped and I've seen screenshots of crew on hold for 23+ hours trying to get through to scheduling.

Because scheduling can't keep track of where crew are, crew can't get a hotel room for themselves in order to start their FAA mandated rest period. Lots of stories of crew members booking their one hotel rooms with the hopes it'll be reimbursed at some point.

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Board needs to ****can the CEO, CIO, and anyone else critical to not updating this process. Archaic and inexcusable.

I work for a Fortune 50 and can understand the difficulty with making expensive and painful choices to update systems when there was a time when the system you have was part of your competitive advantage. We were in exactly that situation at my company with highly customized (which played a big part in our advantage) but very dated systems. But you've bite that bullet and make that investment or you risk this kind of apocalyptic issue that is going to cost you far more in cost and reputation.

Also, this kind of archaic system also holds back so many other parts of the business from advancing. When most other systems and processes have to interface with these ancient systems, that always adds limitations, difficulty, and expense. In the end, the whole business is held back. Massive failure in leadership and investment decisions.

TXTransplant said:

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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

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When you make spirit and allegiant look like fine oiled airline operations there's probably something seriously wrong.

In-laws were flying back to AUS from SBA via DIA a couple months ago. We live ~ 1 hr north of SBA and got the CNX message when we we're 5 minutes from the airport. Bag desk lady provided to try and tell us it was weather even though the celling was perfectly fine, no wind and clear visibility. Checked FA and there were no delays at DIA or AUS with perfectly fine weather then and for the foreseeable future.

Since they claimed it was weather we had to drive back home and drive back the next day.

I called their bull****, but didn't press the issue due to the fact that my in-laws have a much more pleasant demeanor than I do in situations like this.

This is one of the main reasons I avoid SWA just as much as I avoid spirit for personal travel and if I can avoid the GSA city pair if it happens to be SWA for work.
/cool story

Seeing news stories of people sitting in airports for 4 or 5 days now. I have concluded some folks are just not able to function unless they are told what to do. Guess that is why we have a "safety net".

Just woke up after a 12+ hour sleep and watched the CEO's video. He said what I would expect a CEO to say, but I'm not impressed.

I'm starting to look at this incident like the freeze/power outage situation in Feb 2021. The incident wasn't entirely preventable, but it was made orders of magnitude worse by executives who get paid a lot of money to make better decisions.

So, I'm not excusing SW at all. Heads should roll for this, and they should be hit with heavy fines.

But standing at a ticket counter the past few days was about as effective as calling Centerpoint when the power is out.

As an individual traveler, what I'm learning (especially post-Covid) is you have to look out for yourself - more now than ever. Because when an institution of this level fails, the "fix" never addresses the needs of individuals. And the more individuals that are affected, the worse it gets. At some point there was simply no way for SW to address the individual needs of the AT LEAST 500k passengers they left stranded all over the country.

I think the takeaway here is travelers need to have a back up plan for when and if the poop hits the fan. This starts with travel insurance, but there are things you can do to protect yourself, too. Just a few basic things people can do are have an extra credit card for emergencies, NEVER pack medicine in your carry on (I can't believe how many people do this!), plan for an extra vacation day or two around a big trip or trips at the busiest times of year, make notes of alternate flights on alternate airlines. I know for me, for any given trip the options are usually SW and one other airline (mostly United but sometimes AA or Delta, depending on the destination). And keep in touch with family and friends who might give you a heads up. I was in a holiday vacation bubble last week and really didn't know what all was going on, but after our flight was cancelled, I helped a few friends who had flights scheduled this week (and also didn't realize what a mess things were).

Adjust your plans accordingly if you are traveling with children. It was fairly easy to get my son (who is 18) one seat on an alternate flight. But I was with my BF and his three kids, the youngest being 13. We immediately realized there was no way we would ever get 5 people on one flight, and someone would have to travel with the youngest.

Just like the freeze, the chances of something exactly like this happening again are probably pretty small, but prepare for the worst anyway. Figure out where on the spectrum a backup plan needs to be for you to feel comfortable (ie, not everyone needs to run out and buy a generator)

txags92 said:

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TXTransplant said:

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One thing I've noticed in doing business with Southwest, especially since Covid, is I don't think the airport employees have the authority or even presence of mind to help when the poop hits the fan. I think these agents (particularly at the gate) are trained to do one thing and one thing only: get people on planes. When they can't do that, everything breaks down fast.

When a plane is delayed or cancelled, paxs' first instinct is to go to the to the ticket counter and start demanding things. Really, all they should be expecting is for an agent to rebook them (if that's a viable solution) EVEN if it means the pax pays something to make that happen. Better yet, rebook yourself.

Then sort it all out when your trip is over via email with the corporate customer service reps. I've always found the phone reps to be much more friendly, patient, and helpful than the airport staff.

I realize this is hard for a lot of people. Especially with this last event - they wanted SW to "fix it". But that wasn't even an option - for a whole bunch of reasons.

But in this day and age, you just don't get very far going up to a desk or gate agent at the airport (if there even is one) and demanding vouchers or hotel rooms or money or whatever. I just don't think those employees have the authority to do that anymore.

I'm not trying to justify that approach. It's just the way things are, and unless there is a big change, I think the better option is to just get from point A to point B as best you can and then settle up the money/credits/refunds/vouchers later over the phone or email.

And that should have been the message, whether verbal or by email or text, given to every passenger over the last few days: "We deeply apologize but this situation is more complicated than what our gate/ticketing agents can solve. If your situation is urgent, your best option is to book with another airline or find alternate transportation to your destination. Save your receipts and we will sort this all out when you get home."

It sucks, but it may have been the blunt approach that some paxs needed to take matters into their own hands.

I do think airport staff are probably trained with a "script" to give to unhappy/disgruntled paxs that deflects blame to something out of the employee's control in order to avoid confrontations between angry paxs and staff (ie, blame it on the weather). But none of us believe those stories anymore and they just make a bad situation worse.

---

Back in June 21, I was told exactly the opposite when they cancelled our 6pm flight at 8am in the morning. I asked about hotel/meal vouchers or covering the extra day of rental car and was told that the gate agent at the airport had the most power to give those out and that they couldn't do it over the phone. Since we were flying from Montrose to Houston via Denver and the Denver to Houston leg was the part that was cancelled, we decided to stay the night in Fruita rather than fly to Denver and try to get a hotel there. Since we didn't fly to Denver and then take it up with the agent there at the time, they refused to give us anything. They also claimed it was a weather related delay, even though there were other SW flights leaving Denver and other SW flights arriving in Houston at the same time and weather was clear at both airports.

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Wow. That's so frustrating, and was probably caused by the employee you talked to. They just didn't want to help you and pushed you off onto someone else.

You mentioned the weather thing - on Monday before I knew there was a system-wide failure, I started taking screenshots on Flight Aware of other flights that took off and traveled to our destination around the same time as our cancelled flights. I'm not going to need them now, but at the time it seemed like an easy thing to do, just in case.

txags92 said:

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Something that seems to be a common element in several of southwests meltdowns (large and small) is that cancellations caused at least in part by a large number of gate agents out sick in Denver has played a part. Is it just bad management/bad employees there? Or is there some glitch in their contract that is causing strain there? Sounds like that Dec 21 memo to their employees there was the last straw before a bunch of people get fired.

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Idk if this is always the case, but on our flights post-Covid, it seems like there are A LOT fewer agents at the airport. Often we will sit at a gate for an hour or more and no one will be at the desk. Someone just shows up when it's time to board.

I get that the company is trying to save money, and on a good/normal day, that strategy works fine. I've flown plenty of times where I've never needed to speak or interact with an employee until it's time to board. But it's a disaster when the poop hits the fan.

For anybody perusing the thread, they're moving plane assignments around overnight.

The fact your plane made it into town last night doesn't mean all that much about whether your early morning flight will take off.

Four Seasons Landscaping said:

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For anybody perusing the thread, they're moving plane assignments around overnight.

The fact your plane made it into town last night doesn't mean all that much about whether your early morning flight will take off.

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Watched our inbound flight last night change 3 times and again at 4:30am. Sitting at Hobby now - looks like we might actually make it (HOU - ABQ)