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What the fuck is wrong with you, Southwest Airlines?

Parliament

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Parliament

Parliament 14344

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Southwest accounts for a big share of those. The Dallas-headquartered airline has canceled more than half of its flights, or more than 2,000 total flights, on Monday, according to FlightAware.
On social media, customers are complaining about long lines to speak with representatives, problems with lost bags and excessive wait times or busy signals on the airline's customer service telephone lines.
'Disruptions across our network'
In a statement to CNN, Southwest Airlines said it is "experiencing disruptions across our network as a result of (the winter storm's) lingering effects on the totality of our operation."
Some of the airports seeing the biggest issue are Denver, Las Vegas, Chicago Midway, Baltimore/Washington, and Dallas Love Field where Southwest operates.
Calls to Southwest's customer service attempted Monday afternoon by CNN did not go through, so customers couldn't even get in the queue to speak to a representative. Southwest told CNN it is "fully staffed to answer calls."

 

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

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HornOnTheBayou
HornOnTheBayou

Did the airline lose their luggage? If so, everything that they've got is just what they have on.

tx ind
tx ind

"We didn't cancel flights, we just ran out of flight scheduling technology" -Bob Jordan

Chopper
Chopper

Looking forward to SWA's 2023 marketing campaign. Southwest Airlines: The Spirit of today, the Frontier of tomorrow.

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Samson's Wig

Samson's Wig 3195

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It's a shame, as SW is typically the airline that keeps things going when everyone else falls apart.  E.g., the Orlando airport ran out of jet fuel a couple of weeks ago, and Southwest was the only airline that didn't have disruptions as they were nimble enough to adjust on the fly (aided by their lack of a hub and spoke model).   They're the only airline I'ver experienced making up for delays while in the air (at the cost of extra jet fuel) in order to get things back on track.  Ultimately, their old school point-to-point model helps them dodge a lot of the issues that become systemwide problems for other carriers. Something finally had to give them fits, and I guess this was their week.  A bad week for Southwest doesn't overcome decades of complete failure by the legacy carriers, though. 

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Homercles

Homercles 10206

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They run a pretty lean operation with quick turns and high utilization already, were probably stretched pretty thin like the other airlines due to high demand + lack of captains, and no hub/spoke model can cause massive cascading failures along the entire route the bird was scheduled for that day.  
 

I actually prefer them when flying with my family due to free bags, no change fees outside of fare differences, FAs that aren’t trolls, and wide availability of direct from AUS…not to mention the best FF program out there…but am not shocked they were so exposed to this weather event.  
 

Just damn glad we rarely travel over Christmas.  Fuck that noise.  

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Bevo

Bevo 13602

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While in flight from SJO to Atlanta, Delta cancelled my connecting flight. The connection was cancelled due to weather but it was coming from Tucson so it was in reality a staffing issue. Delta was a mess at Hartsfield on the 24th and 25th and they said they couldn't get me home until the 27th. I found a flight on Delta to New Orleans and then another flight on American to get me back to Austin, yesterday. It cost me $1700, but I'm hoping I can recover some of it. Pain in the ass, though.

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DaysOff

DaysOff 7977

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UAL put 20 percent of the flight crews on reserve for the December bid period. Pissed a lot of people off, but it paid off for recovery of the operation. Nobody's fault when SEA turns into an ice skating rink or DEN gets so cold your ground service equipment freezes up.
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Aqua Buddha

Aqua Buddha 14625

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3 minutes ago, Upgrayedd said:

BIL is a SWA captain.  He’s currently hanging with us in San Diego.  Was supposed to work today and they cancelled his flights.  Staffing is a mess as it seems they have no idea where anyone is an can’t get them to where they need to be. 

Plenty of planes in SD:

 

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26052

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19 minutes ago, Upgrayedd said:

BIL is a SWA captain.  He’s currently hanging with us in San Diego.  Was supposed to work today and they cancelled his flights.  Staffing is a mess as it seems they have no idea where anyone is an can’t get them to where they need to be. 

I'm sure he's enjoying the weather

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26052

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16 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Plenty of planes in SD:

 

You'd think that SWA would be able to cobble together a crew or two in SD.  Fuck, they are all  qualified on the same fucking aircraft.   They need to offer double time to anybody that works on their days off. 

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Aqua Buddha

Aqua Buddha 14625

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3 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

You'd think that SWA would be able to cobble together a crew or two in SD.  Fuck, they are all  qualified on the same fucking aircraft.   They need to offer double time to anybody that works on their days off. 

Yeah, that's the whole fucking point of them using one plane.  Interchangeable parts and crew.  

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royiv

royiv 9387

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2 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

It's a shame, as SW is typically the airline that keeps things going when everyone else falls apart.  E.g., the Orlando airport ran out of jet fuel a couple of weeks ago, and Southwest was the only airline that didn't have disruptions as they were nimble enough to adjust on the fly (aided by their lack of a hub and spoke model).   They're the only airline I'ver experienced making up for delays while in the air (at the cost of extra jet fuel) in order to get things back on track.  Ultimately, their old school point-to-point model helps them dodge a lot of the issues that become systemwide problems for other carriers. Something finally had to give them fits, and I guess this was their week.  A bad week for Southwest doesn't overcome decades of complete failure by the legacy carriers, though. 

Might want to check your math on this one. WN has had a lot more operational issues as of late compared to the big 3 legacy carriers. Their P2P model is actually hurting them since crews and aircraft are dispersed across the country and their antiquated technology can’t even keep up with where crews currently are. WN’s lack of investment in technology for the last three decades has caught up to them.

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26052

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

It's a shame, as SW is typically the airline that keeps things going when everyone else falls apart.  E.g., the Orlando airport ran out of jet fuel a couple of weeks ago, and Southwest was the only airline that didn't have disruptions as they were nimble enough to adjust on the fly (aided by their lack of a hub and spoke model).   They're the only airline I'ver experienced making up for delays while in the air (at the cost of extra jet fuel) in order to get things back on track.  Ultimately, their old school point-to-point model helps them dodge a lot of the issues that become systemwide problems for other carriers. Something finally had to give them fits, and I guess this was their week.  A bad week for Southwest doesn't overcome decades of complete failure by the legacy carriers, though. 

I've NEVER been on a flight that departed late where the captain didn't promise to make up time. 

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Samson's Wig

Samson's Wig 3195

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9 minutes ago, royiv said:

Might want to check your math on this one. WN has had a lot more operational issues as of late compared to the big 3 legacy carriers. Their P2P model is actually hurting them since crews and aircraft are dispersed across the country and their antiquated technology can’t even keep up with where crews currently are. WN’s lack of investment in technology for the last three decades has caught up to them.

I believe you.  Is it possible that they've simply outgrown their model?  It worked well when they were more regional, I suppose.  I still trust them to get me where I'm going (domestically) better than the legacy carriers, just based on my own experience over the years.  I travel quite a bit for work and use most of the major airlines with some frequency.  I often eschew Southwest as they have so many connecting flights and I need to get where I'm going quickly, but I can't remember how many times a legacy carrier failed me for one stupid reason or another and simply booking a different flight on southwest ended up getting me where I needed to go faster than waiting on AA, DElta, United, etc. to get their shit together and provide an alternative. 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9551

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2 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

  Ultimately, their old school point-to-point model helps them dodge a lot of the issues that become systemwide problems for other carriers.  

Except when it doesnt

 

 

Un­like some ri­vals that con­cen­trate fly­ing around cen­tral hubs, South-west planes hop­scotch around the coun­try. That ap­proach can make it hard to iso­late prob­lems to one part of the coun­try and can make it dif­fi­cult to catch back up when things start to go wrong, caus­ing dis­rup­tions to rip­ple.

 

And yeah, the scheduling systems are still a mess:

 

Mean­while, sched­uling pi­lots and flight at­ten­dants be­came chaotic when the sys­tems couldn’t keep up with the changes, ex­ec­u­tives and union lead­ers said.
 

“We have crews stuck, and sched-uling doesn’t know where they are,” Casey Mur­ray, head of the union that rep­re­sents South­west’s pi­lots, said Sun­day. Pi­lots booked their own ho­tels when the air­line didn’t as­sign them. Some flight at­ten­dants spent the night on cots in crew lounges, ac­cord­ing to their union.
 

Crews rely on phone sys­tems to call in for flight as­sign­ments, and many waited for hours for in­struc­tions be­fore hit­ting lim­its on how many hours they could work with­out rest, a prob­lem that union lead­ers re­ported and ex­ec­u­tives ac­knowl-edged. Flights were can­celed when they didn’t have a full com­ple­ment of crew.

 

Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer An­drew Wat­ter­son told em­ploy­ees Sun­day night that the air­line’s crew-sched­uling sys­tems were “over-matched in sit­u­a­tions of this scale.” Au­to­mated sys­tems for crew sched­uling couldn’t han­dle the vol­ume, re­quir­ing man­ual workarounds that over­whelmed the staff, he wrote.

 “Even with crews pick­ing up open trips, the dis­rup­tion of our fleet and crew net­works brought on by the im­pact of the storm had us start­ing to­day with hun­dreds of flights that needed crews,” said Mr. Wat­ter­son in the mes­sage Sun­day evening. That meant about 10% of the air­line’s fly­ing was can­celed as it launched its op­er­a­tion Sun­day, and the num­ber con­tin­ued to grow through­out that day.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Bob Jor­dan told em­ploy­ees in a mes­sage Sun­day: “The win­ter storm was un­prece-dented all across our net­work. And we’ve got fall­out from that—just try­ing to get the net­work back to nor­mal.”

Mr. Jor­dan said out-of-date sys­tems are partly to blame.

“Part of what we’re suf­fer­ing is a lack of tools,” he said. The air­line had al­ready been in the process of up­grad­ing some of those sys­tems.
 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9551

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37 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

You'd think that SWA would be able to cobble together a crew or two in SD.  Fuck, they are all  qualified on the same fucking aircraft.   They need to offer double time to anybody that works on their days off. 

I think you can blame FAA regs /unions for some of that:

”A South­west spokesman said some flights were boarded and then can­celed due to flight crews run­ning out of al­low­able work time.”

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Rimbo

Rimbo 26158

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My Dad's still here at SAN; original flight was supposed to leave ~11am pst?

"Thanks. Just went through security for the fourth time, and I am waiting in the boarding area with an airplane but we are two crewmembers short of a whole crew. They just announced a late one crewmember short.

"Pilot came and sat beside me and told me he didn't know where he was going, but he was still had flight time and he said that both Chicago and Denver and Dallas were in a mess."

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26052

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:

I think you can blame FAA regs /unions for some of that:

”A South­west spokesman said some flights were boarded and then can­celed due to flight crews run­ning out of al­low­able work time.”

you missed the "days off" part.  FA's only need 10 hours off to be legal, IIRC.

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26052

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2 minutes ago, Rimbo said:

My Dad's still here at SAN; original flight was supposed to leave ~11am pst?

"Thanks. Just went through security for the fourth time, and I am waiting in the boarding area with an airplane but we are two crewmembers short of a whole crew. They just announced a late one crewmember short.

"Pilot came and sat beside me and told me he didn't know where he was going, but he was still had flight time and he said that both Chicago and Denver and Dallas were in a mess."

Where is he headed? 

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Pescado_Rojo

Pescado_Rojo 19441

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I got caught up in this coming home from Mexico Friday. Got stuck in FLL when they cancelled my flight home. Booked my on a new flight Saturday afternoon, then cancelled that and told me they couldn’t get me home until Tuesday. I found a seat on an American flight out of MIA on Christmas Day and got home last night. It took me 4 hours to get my bags back Saturday evening at FLL. I thought there was going to be a riot. They had 22 cancelled flights, and only 4 or 5 baggage handlers downstairs. They were just puking bags onto the carousels with no rhyme or reason. Passengers were organizing bags into rows based on arrival cities. I booked my own room Saturday night at the La Meridian hotel rather than wait another 2 hours in line for my Fairfield Inn voucher. AUS was a shitshow when I landed, too. 584498B9-7514-4D94-AA9D-E54EB281ABAA.thumb.jpeg.4c8f645faa3d2d38f1fd1e5db050d2e5.jpeg

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26052

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All Southwest Airlines flights out of San Diego were canceled late Monday afternoon as part of a widespread, nationwide flight disruption that stranded thousands of travelers at airports across the country on the day after Christmas.

The majority of all arriving Southwest Airlines flights were also canceled, with the airline blaming the widespread disruption on recent winter storms, saying snow and extremely cold temperatures last week forced changes to flight schedules “at a volume and magnitude” still having repercussions Monday.

As of 4 p.m., Southwest Airlines had canceled more than 2,800 flights nationwide, or nearly 70 percent of all its scheduled flights, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

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That included every Southwest flight scheduled to leave San Diego International Airport from 4 p.m. and on, according to the airport’s website. All but a few arriving Southwest flights were also canceled, and the ones that weren’t were delayed.

Including Southwest and all other airlines, there were 86 canceled flights and 56 delayed flights Monday at San Diego International Airport, representing 43 percent of all flights on the busy travel day, according to FlightAware.

Southwest Airlines officials issued a statement Monday apologizing for the operational challenges that caused the cancellations and long delays, blaming the issues on an intense winter storm. The airline promised it was working to recover.

 

 

“With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable,” Southwest said in its news release. “We are working with safety at the forefront to urgently address wide-scale disruption by re-balancing the airline and repositioning crews and our fleet, ultimately to best serve all who plan to travel with us. And our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning.”

The airline said it was fully staffed late last week and prepared for the approaching Christmas weekend when severe weather swept across the continent.

“This forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity,” Southwest said.

 

 

The airline admitted anticipating “additional challenges with an already reduced level of flights as we approach the coming New Year’s holiday travel period, and we are working to reach out to customers whose travel plans will change with specific information and their available options.”

Southwest added its employees and crews “are showing up in every single way. We are beyond grateful for that. Our shared goal is to take care of every single customer with the hospitality and heart for which we are known. On the other side of this, we will work to make things right for those we have let down, including our employees.”

City News Service contributed to this report.

 

 

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Texas Jeff

Texas Jeff 1946

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PSA for anyone trying to fly out of Austin for a non-cancelled flight ... there were zero parking places available yesterday at both the on-airport parking and the offsite parking vendors.

So, if by some chance your flight is not cancelled, you might want to ask for a ride to the airport.

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Pancho

Pancho 45076

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We’ve decided not to chance it and will cancel our PVR trip as we don’t think Soufwest will be caught up by then. Flights go thru PDX and Soufwest isn’t supposed to fly out of there for 4 more days per the chisme on social media.

I’m not the biggest fan of PVR during up season anyway. I’d rather go during down season in June. 

 

Looks like I’ll be watching Texas football and basketball this weekend at either Circa or the Cosmopolitan.

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26052

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17 minutes ago, The Ace of Aces said:

Bob Jordan should be shot out of a cannon for that behind aggressive message to employees on Denver the other day. He needs to be fired by the board, stat. Herb is rolling in his grave.

This is America.  Incompetent CEO's get bonuses.  

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