Jump to content

What the fuck is wrong with you, Southwest Airlines?

Parliament

By Parliament
in Daily Texan

 Share

Recommended Posts

Aqua Buddha

Aqua Buddha 14600

Posted
Posted
7 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

The thing that always shocks me when these stories happen is how many people still voluntarily check bags. 

We were on a flight once that was delayed 8 hours or something and people were panicking because they had critical medication in their checked luggage.  If it's critical, why are they checking it?  

With rare exceptions, I simply don't understand why people check bags.

  • Hook 'Em 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 599
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

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.

Posted Images

Wally Fairway

Wally Fairway 5575

Posted
Posted

Looking for any one with information to get to a person at SWA - my daughter (no pics) had her flight from Grand Rapids to Midway cancelled for tomorrow, but her flight to Seattle from MIdway is not cancelled. We need to talk to a person to see if we can keep her 2nd leg and drive her to Chicago.

None of the phone numbers I can find for SWA are going through. I think it is truly FUBAR

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Chopper

Chopper 17244

Posted
Posted

This posted above coincides with an article I read last night. SWA's scheduling software is shit and they haven't invested in technology. When they need to reach an employee to ask them to work, someone manually calls and the employees know to ignore the call.

image.thumb.png.038eee8fddace17a6064fc62d8c87230.png

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Js1

Js1 85527

Posted
Posted
58 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

The thing that always shocks me when these stories happen is how many people still voluntarily check bags. 

I’ll check bags only on the way home, if I check at all. 

4 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

Its almost like flying around xmas is chaotic or something?

Plus temps around Christmas were single digits to freezing in some places. Still limits to how much the human body can be outside doing ground operations when it’s 7 and feels like -13 

Massive clusterfuck all around 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Skipper

Skipper 6192

Posted
Posted

Wife and I were planning to get away for 24 hours for Alamo Bowl/Riverwalk.   Southwest just cancelled our Thurs flight LOL.   It's going to take me a while to trust this shitty airline again after this.    No desire to drive roundtrip so checked flights on AA and they are charging $2500 roundtrip from DFW to SAT.   So hope the fucking DOT investigates AA for price gouging as well.   Oh well - I haven't bought tix yet and hoping Chase Sapphire travel protection covers the non-refundable room (if they won't waive).  I'll just watch from couch.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
hornmpa96

hornmpa96 2620

Posted
Posted

I appreciate in the Southwest Employee email that Aggie Bob says “Southwest is still a great company.”

They need a dose of reality. Southwest has one fucking job - Transport passengers and their luggage on time and safely. At this point, their grade is clearly a F. Also, they can’t blame this on the weather as the weather was the same for every other major airline and last I checked WN is the only airline trying to schedule crews with a #2 pencil and a Big Chief notebook. At times in a company’s life, you have to invest in technology and WN waited 30 years too late.

If Bob was being honest, he would have said - “Southwest sucks. We’re going to be paying a significant sum to passengers who had to rebook on other airlines and we still need to update our technology so this never happens again.”

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Rage+1 2
  • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Dbeasy

Dbeasy 15084

Posted
Posted

Before anyone bags on the Aggie CEO, just know that the previous CEO was a Texas grad and he ran the business for 15 years, during which time these computer system issues reached a code red status. And yet he still didn’t fix the issues.

The new CEO has only been in the job for less than a year and he’s an ex-programmer. The former CEO was a finance guy, and like what almost always happens, a finance guy as a CEO is good for near term performance and a disaster for long term performance.

This makes me sad. Southwest was one of the best Texas companies ever and now it’s a complete shit show. 

  • Hook 'Em 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Js1

Js1 85527

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

This makes me sad. Southwest was one of the best Texas companies ever and now it’s a complete shit show. 

Southwest being run into the ground 

Whataburger bought by Chicago and being driven into the ground 

Buccees is now white trash mecca for fat Texans

Texas Football has been diluted because aggy just had to be in the SEC

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
  • Haha 2
  • Rage+1 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14936

Posted
Posted

Probably cheaper than a rental car since it won’t be pick up and drop off at different airports

In the past I’ve done that with National and they didn’t charge extra. I don’t rent as much as I used to though so maybe that changed.

Doesn’t matter if there are no cars though.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14936

Posted
Posted
Honestly kind of shocking that they had so little computerization and automation in their routing and scheduling. Hell, I know garbage collection companies with more sophisticated routing and scheduling than SWA!

Airline routing is notoriously difficult to automate. Not saying it can’t be done. But my dad retired from Netjets a few years ago, and he said between weather, broken equipment, sick crew, and fickle customers they just had to do it all manually. Different market for sure but air travel suffers when conditions aren’t optimal.

Additionally: I’m in the enterprise software space and you would be surprised how many massive global companies run important aspects of their business on basically excel spreadsheets and email.
  • Hook 'Em 4
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Henry Hill

Henry Hill 3156

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, Homercles said:

Their scheduling software sounds like a macro’d Excel sheet

image.png.f477538980a5150e0a1e806a0f3d6835.png

You’d be (maybe not) surprised at how antiquated the tech stacks are at some of the largest Fortune 500 companies.

Reasoning for lack of investment is usually that the current systems still work and there is an inability to provide enough of a compelling ROI to justify the combined risk of increased cap/opex and management of the implementation at scale.

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Like 1
  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14936

Posted
Posted
My wife brings the whole house with her. That shit isn't fitting in a carry-on. When I travel it's always a carry-on plus a backpack 

Yup. I’m in Chicago now visiting family for a few days. I think the wife brought 37 changes of clothes.

But I flew the best airline in America so I’m unconcerned #delta4lyfe
  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14936

Posted
Posted
You’d be (maybe not) surprised at how antiquated the tech stacks are at some of the largest Fortune 500 companies.
Reasoning for lack of investment is usually that the current systems still work and there is an inability to provide enough of a compelling ROI to justify the combined risk of increased cap/opex and management of the implementation at scale.

Budgets dollars aren’t released until something breaks, and good people keep things from breaking for far too long. They would be better off letting some of these things fail.
  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
The Dog

The Dog 44124

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

Airline routing is notoriously difficult to automate. Not saying it can’t be done. But my dad retired from Netjets a few years ago, and he said between weather, broken equipment, sick crew, and fickle customers they just had to do it all manually. Different market for sure but air travel suffers when conditions aren’t optimal.

It's far from impossible. Delta has had automated rebooking for passengers since the late '90s - I know because it was the first project I worked on there.

Automating IROPs for crew and equipment is a lot more complex but can be easily automated with the kind of power and technology we have available today. It's definitely more complex for SW because of how their route network is structured but on the flip side they only have one equipment type to worry about. 

Bottom line is that they neglected automation for far too long and now all the chickens have come home to roost. 

9 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

Additionally: I’m in the enterprise software space and you would be surprised how many massive global companies run important aspects of their business on basically excel spreadsheets and email.

So true. It's been getting better but some places are....yeeesh.

  • Hook 'Em 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
conVINCEd

conVINCEd 21469

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, Henry Hill said:

You’d be (maybe not) surprised at how antiquated the tech stacks are at some of the largest Fortune 500 companies.

Reasoning for lack of investment is usually that the current systems still work and there is an inability to provide enough of a compelling ROI to justify the combined risk of increased cap/opex and management of the implementation at scale.

I used to work for one of those companies.  They were in the process of updating the software to something more user friendly, but there was always something wrong with the new stuff.  If you really needed to get something done you pulled up the DOS prompt and started typing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13521

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:


Airline routing is notoriously difficult to automate. Not saying it can’t be done. But my dad retired from Netjets a few years ago, and he said between weather, broken equipment, sick crew, and fickle customers they just had to do it all manually. Different market for sure but air travel suffers when conditions aren’t optimal.

Additionally: I’m in the enterprise software space and you would be surprised how many massive global companies run important aspects of their business on basically excel spreadsheets and email.

Not to mention there is always the 30-year tenured employee named Bob, and everyone dreads what will happen when he retires or dies.  In some companies, Bob's value is noted and he earns 500K.  In others, he's makes 50K.

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Wally Fairway

Wally Fairway 5575

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Wally Fairway said:

Looking for any one with information to get to a person at SWA - my daughter (no pics) had her flight from Grand Rapids to Midway cancelled for tomorrow, but her flight to Seattle from MIdway is not cancelled. We need to talk to a person to see if we can keep her 2nd leg and drive her to Chicago.

None of the phone numbers I can find for SWA are going through. I think it is truly FUBAR

 

Booked a flight out of OHare tomorrow morning, all while listening to the hold music for SWA; and it was under $1,000. 
Now having to deal with a daughter who is crying, and trying to figure out how early I have to get up to make sure she is there on time for a 6am flight tomorrow. 

We've loved SWA for cheap fares, 2 free bags, cancellation credit policy - but I think we've all know that this was a FAFO gambit 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13521

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

I used to work for one of those companies.  They were in the process of updating the software to something more user friendly, but there was always something wrong with the new stuff.  If you really needed to get something done you pulled up the DOS prompt and started typing.

I'm sure some of us here could write a dissertation about enterprise software implementations but I'm happy that I pivoted my career in a different direction. the only upside was the pay.

Departments would only want you to customize the new software to work as close as possible to the old system. The old system is being tossed out for a reason. But no, they want customization as opposed to changing how they do their job. I would have directors beg to have the new system work identically to the old one except they wanted it to be faster.

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
CooterBrown

CooterBrown 18022

Posted
Posted
I'm sure some of us here could write a dissertation about enterprise software implementations



We did a 4-year $80M implementation that was customized to mimic our in house antiquated system. 5 years later, we paid $1M to just roll back that custom implementation to the default out of the box configuration and just adjusted work flows to work with that instead.
  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JesusSweatDuck

JesusSweatDuck 17809

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, Henry Hill said:

You’d be (maybe not) surprised at how antiquated the tech stacks are at some of the largest Fortune 500 companies.

Reasoning for lack of investment is usually that the current systems still work and there is an inability to provide enough of a compelling ROI to justify the combined risk of increased cap/opex and management of the implementation at scale.

Yep, you'd be terrified on how much shit still runs off of COBOL and Mainframes.  Only reason IBM is still in business

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
PenelopeWitherspoon

PenelopeWitherspoon 19142

Posted
Posted

I have not flown SWA in almost 20 years.  I hated not having an assigned seat.  I am a show up 5 minutes before they close the door type flyer.  If you spend 5 minutes longer in the airport than you have to, you are doing it wrong.  Signed, someone who used to fly 150k miles a year.  

Now, I mainly fly international for work, so it looks a little different, but I still only show up as close to my flight as I can.  

I also check a bag.  I am usually flying for at least a week, and especially in winter, that extra space is needed for coats/winter sweaters, etc..

I have only had one incident with luggage, and it got to me within 48 hours.  

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing


Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!

×
×
  • Create New...