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Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

thepointsguy.com

471–480 of 627 posts

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I think it's less about people being against the vaccine and more about people being against the mandates . One giant issue with them is that they completely ignore natural immunity, which over 30% of the country now has and studies show is drastically better than the vaccine, but without the dangerous side effects. If the mandates were rational, they would be centered around antibody tests.

There are very rare "dangerous" side effects to the vaccines.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#472
post #319

There's a cutthroat competition between the airlines so how can we be surprised that they have to "optimise" everything until fuckups like this start to happen? Consumers who are looking for someone to blame for this, should look in the mirror: those people who pick the cheapest picket at Expedia just by "sort by cheapest first", are the main culprits. Airline industry is in the pathetic state it is due to irrational…

Competition is the way capitalism works :-) . And I've seeing absolute monopolies doing far worse. Examples: the Cuban communications monopoly[^1] and their national airlines. That said, airlines are between the sword and a hard place, and I expect it's going to get much, much worse as climate regulation kicks in the next few months. If you want to fly to some remote country for tourism, do it as soon as possible. [^…

Competition is alright, problem is that with the airlines, literally all competition in the last 2+ decades was entirely in price.

Given how cheap tickets today are, there so much that could be improved for the small and really non-decisive increases in prices (compared to the rest of average trip costs say hotel, taxi to/from airport, etc)! It's not that expensive to turn the modern day economy class experience - which is a truly an insult to human dignity - into something quite pleasant - in the structure of overall trip price it will be barely noticeable. But that won't happen because people pick entirely by PRICE alone. This is irrational and sad.

Compare with restaurants for example. There's also a ton of competition there, they go bust very frequently and have also very thin margins. But they don't try to compete ONLY in price, there is a great variety and customer experience is on average quite acceptable. Even closer point of comparison is hotels. There's nothing wrong going on with the hotels, while they are also a terribly competitive industry.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#473

There is currently a major outage at a major part of the infrastructure of our nation, and nobody believes anybody about why. The airline is saying it's something to do with weather, but somehow they're the only airline effected. Everybody online seems to the think it's some sort of labor strike, but the union denies this and nobody can find anywhere where people are planning this. And yet thousands of people are stu…

Seems like it’s a “wildcat strike” where some employees organize and strike silently without the consent or direction of their union.

The rumors are that it's due to the employee covid vaccine mandate.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#474
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks are genetically incapable of doing anything useful in terms of technology. Their mainframe architecture was outdated 40 years ago! They will forever maintain their hacks and buggy software.

What do you mean by 'useful' here? Facebook goes down for half a day and everybody laughs. Take 'banks' down for the same amount of time and see what happens.

You certainly don't use banks often, because their systems being offline for several hours is a relative common event.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#475
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "99% survival rate" 1% dead means around 3.5 million dead, in the US alone. Do you consider that acceptable?

If the choice is between 3.5 million dead, and the rise of authoritarianism and censorship, then yes the former is much less tragic than the latter and therefore the more acceptable option. And that's before taking into account that the survival rate is quite a bit higher than 99%, so it won't be 3.5 million dead. And also before taking into account that the vast majority of the dead will be the very old, and people…

Vaccine mandates aren't new. You weren't protesting them 3 years ago, but now you are willing to take the side of 3.5 million members of the community slowly dying so you don't have to get a shot. Your persecution complex is out of control.

The absurdity of peoples' accusations of world-ending authoritarianism and censorship is baffling.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#476
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southwest Airlines, passengers claim different causes for cancellations https://www.khou.com/article/news/national/southwest-airline... > The nationwide cancellations came as the airline announced Monday that the company will now require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccinated by Dec. 8. > Some customers said they were told the cancellations are a direct result of the vaccine mandate. > “I asked them specifically 'i…

> They also said that air traffic control had a massive walkout because of the vaccine mandate This doesn't make any sense at all. If a vaccine-mandate induced ATC walkout was the cause, all air carriers would be disrupted, not just Southwest. I suspect this is someone pitching his own views about a situation he doesn't know the true cause of.

Not necessarily, because it depends which city your hub is in. Other airlines might have issues connecting to that city, but if their hub is in a city that doesn't have heavy anti-vax presence, then they are only slightly impacted.

Jacksonville FL, for example is a major SW hub, and was completely shut down. Similar issues exist in two other major SW hubs - Houston and Phoenix.

Also, not all other airlines have mandated vaccinations. ...and those that have aren't in heavily anti-vax cities.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's less about people being against the vaccine and more about people being against the mandates . One giant issue with them is that they completely ignore natural immunity, which over 30% of the country now has and studies show is drastically better than the vaccine, but without the dangerous side effects. If the mandates were rational, they would be centered around antibody tests.

Just a small correction: natural immunity is not without side effects - it is just that the side effect price of the natural infection is already sunk cost for those who had the disease.

Yes, I should have said “without the additional” side effects of the vaccine, but I assumed everyone would understand that part of it. But you are right that I should have been more specific, because someone else responded saying that I was overlooking the effects of COVID itself. So apparently not everyone did understand that. People in these debates tend to assume that anyone questioning mandates is automatically a COVID denier because the issue has become political. Two things can be true at once: COVID can be dangerous, and the mandates can be flawed.

Of course COVID itself is dangerous. But once you have had it and survived it, the science shows that you have far better immunity than the vaccine delivers. The mandates do not take this into account. That is all I was trying to say.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely explanation is here [1]. Pilots (and apparently some air traffic controllers) are doing a sickout to protest vaccine mandates, presumably to make the powers that be understand just how difficult they can make things for the country if they proceed with intended mass firings. But the sickout is technically illegal, so nobody will acknowledge it. That is why you won't see a clear explanation of this inc…

Agree. Have family members in the pilot's union and in the air traffic control union. The White House thinks they can force unilateral changes to the union contracts. If the unions admitted to what was going on, the White House would have more legal authority to intervene more directly with the unions.

The parent comment above is being downvoted in favor of the top comment - which is a baseless pro-union comment.

It's so strange. Do people really prefer to push an agenda here rather than understand the nuance and truth of what is going on?

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#479
post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it’s a “wildcat strike” where some employees organize and strike silently without the consent or direction of their union.

The rumors are that it's due to the employee covid vaccine mandate.

I think that's the reason for the wildcat strike - the union won't abide by it so a group of pilots who don't want the vaccine are not working to make their point to management. It's all hearsay though.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#480
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that vaccine mandates are some global scheme by bill gates. While they’re all wrong, anti-vaxxers are a whole spectrum. I do think one big of nuance is important here though: there are a lot of strongly pro-vax people, like myself, who are strongly anti-mandate. The choice to take the vaccine is the correct choice. The other choice hurts not only yourself, but others. However there is no circumstance in which I’d s…

> However there is no circumstance in which I’d support the government requiring a medical procedure to be performed on someone without their consent. You do realize vaccine mandates aren’t new? The chicken pox vaccine has been mandates for all children attending public schools for over 20 years now. It has been enormously successful in eradicated what used to be a very common disease.

Come back to me when you have a mandate for new vaccine with less than a decade safety record required for adults to simply exist in society

The child vaccine requirement analogy is flawed for at-least 3 reasons

1. We have all kinds of things we apply to children we do not to adults. They are children after all. For example kids are banned from smoking, but adults can.

2. It only applies if attend a public school, parents can opt out by sending their child to a religious school, private school, or home school.

3. You assume people that oppose government mandates for COVID support government mandates for children. Many of us do not, I think parents should vaccinate their children, I do not believe it is the role of government to mandate that no more than I believe it is the role of government to mandate the COVID vaccination

That is basically what it is comes down to is do you believe the government is your master, your parent, or king. Or do you believe in personal freedom and autonomy

It clear what choice you have made

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