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Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

cnn.com

51–60 of 115 posts

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#51
I was impacted by this. I had three flights canceled in four days. My bags are still somewhere in Denver. I ended up rebooking on American. I'm certainly going to try to make Southwest pay for it, once their phone lines clear up.

Southwest is going to need to go above and beyond to fix this or they're done in my book. I will choose a more expensive option over them. I'll choose a less direct route. This Russian Roulette but every chamber's loaded game has been an enormous, stressful waste of time.

None of the hacks suggested here work when the customer service phone line is down, the website doesn't work, and every other flight is cancelled or full.

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#52
post #16
post #14

Found this interesting reading as to a possible reason why their flight system seems so much more fragile than the legacy carriers: https://www.inc.com/kelly-main/southwest-becomes-one-of-amer...

It sounds reasonable but I’m surprised that it’s not “cost efficient” to have a few sore planes and crews strategically located around the USA - you’d only need three or four to be able to respond within hours to any scheduling mishap. Margins must be quite low.

The stock marget rewards profits, not happy customers. It’s not about the margins, it’s about maximizing the bottom line

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#53
I’m seriously wondering about Southwest’s software systems at the moment. I was traveling with a youth sports team on American early this month. We had a flight cancellation that resulted in about 30 people needing to find new flights. You just popped open the app or website and were given multiple options to rebook.

My brother had a flight canceled on southwest Thursday night. It was completely impossible to rebook or even cancel on their website at that point. The phone and physical lines were impossible, so we just booked a new flight for the following day in order to get him home for Christmas, it wasn’t even much more than his original flight. The next day his original reservation was “automatically rebooked” on a flight for Christmas morning. He kept the new booking and didn’t cancel the rebooked leg till he was wheels up. Craziest thing was the flight wasn’t full. He got an entire row to himself.

The fact that southwest doesn’t seem to have the ability to let customers self rebook in situations like this seems to be a major IT/software failing.

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#54

I was impacted by this. I had three flights canceled in four days. My bags are still somewhere in Denver. I ended up rebooking on American. I'm certainly going to try to make Southwest pay for it, once their phone lines clear up. Southwest is going to need to go above and beyond to fix this or they're done in my book. I will choose a more expensive option over them. I'll choose a less direct route. This Russian Roule…

I hope your damages are minimal.

What would it take for southwest to remedy the station for you?

I know it's hard to say. You may never get your bags.

I'm basically valuing any future southwest credit as $0. All of my air miles at $0 too :(

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#55
post #29
post #7

There's an unsubstantiated rumor that 120 Southwest ramp agents walked off the job at Denver International Airport after the VP of operations out of Dallas sent a demanding (and possibly unreasonable) memo to the Denver staff banning sick time without a doctors note and requiring mandatory overtime. https://twitter.com/AtSouthwest/status/1606543397996855296 If true, it could account for a majority of SW's cancellatio…

You have cause and effect backwards. That memo appears to be issued as a result of all the flight problems. And it says it's a temporary emergency policy due to the current trouble they are having.

[deleted]

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#56
post #4

From the article: > If you've been left in the lurch and your efforts to reach a customer service agent are going nowhere, the founder of Scott's Cheap Flights suggests trying an international number. > "The main hotline for US airlines will be clogged with other passengers getting rebooked. To get through to an agent quickly, call any one of the airline's dozens of international offices" Scott Keyes said. > "Agents…

this is good advice, let me extrapolate to a simpler heuristic. When landing at an airport when you know several connections are lost due to local issue with your airline, always get on the phone as soon as you get out of the aircraft. certainly call before heading to the kiosk and lining up for the lone agent to support you Because, by the time the sole agent gets to listen to your issue, the next flight will be ful…

Bear in mind that many airlines allow ticketing staff at the airport (that is if they didn't get rid of them all, yes, I'm looking at you, British Airways at LHR) much more leeway in terms of rerouting, particularly on other routes or indeed carriers.

We had this on 25 December, our flight to London was cancelled. Automatically rebooked to our destination later that day, but our party (2 adults, 3 kids) was split up across two separate flights several hours apart.

Of course I had already phoned in even before we got the rebooking. email, airline phone agent said that's what they have, both of those flights now full so no chance of getting us all together. Asked about other departure points, told no.

Queued at ticketing desk for 45 mins, asked to be reunited on flight to the same destination but from a different departure airport, 2h away, agent did it immediately, checked us in and handed over the new boarding passes.

Don't underestimate just how much changes when the tickets move to airport control at T-24h

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southwest has always allowed free cancellations, up to 10 minutes before boarding— that was one of its main selling points. You (normally) get the money as flight credit, however.

An expiring flight credit, which is perhaps less desirable than the cash you paid. A few months ago, they monkeyed with our departure time, and we correctly concluded that it would end up missing the connecting flight. The booking agent couldn't give us anything but time-bomb vouchers, but I got cash by emailing customer support. I used the federal wording for "elected not to travel" and "substantially different itin…

Not anymore! https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2022/07/2...

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southwest has always allowed free cancellations, up to 10 minutes before boarding— that was one of its main selling points. You (normally) get the money as flight credit, however.

An expiring flight credit, which is perhaps less desirable than the cash you paid. A few months ago, they monkeyed with our departure time, and we correctly concluded that it would end up missing the connecting flight. The booking agent couldn't give us anything but time-bomb vouchers, but I got cash by emailing customer support. I used the federal wording for "elected not to travel" and "substantially different itin…

[deleted]

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#59
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is good advice, let me extrapolate to a simpler heuristic. When landing at an airport when you know several connections are lost due to local issue with your airline, always get on the phone as soon as you get out of the aircraft. certainly call before heading to the kiosk and lining up for the lone agent to support you Because, by the time the sole agent gets to listen to your issue, the next flight will be ful…

Better yet use the in-app or website self service functions to rebook yourself without waiting to talk to anyone. It is truly a race to grab the remaining seats on the next few flights.

Many airlines don't allow as much leeway in their self-service rebooking as they grant their own staff. This is perhaps ok if you're flying a route with many flights per day, but if you need even a minor reroute due to a cancellation, often the airline app refuses to even consider this, even if it saves your overall itinerary and is therefore definitely in the airline's interest too.

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#60

I was impacted by this. I had three flights canceled in four days. My bags are still somewhere in Denver. I ended up rebooking on American. I'm certainly going to try to make Southwest pay for it, once their phone lines clear up. Southwest is going to need to go above and beyond to fix this or they're done in my book. I will choose a more expensive option over them. I'll choose a less direct route. This Russian Roule…

[deleted]
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