What the fuck is wrong with you, Southwest Airlines?

[Nice Guy Eddie 13536]

1 minute ago, CooterBrown said:

 

 

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.

 

 

Not surprised by that story.

At one, smaller implementation that I was on the team as a junior team member, the CEO told the staff that the new system was more important than any one employee. They could get on board with the new program or leave. That apparently was his mgmt style but it was the easiest project that I was ever on.

[Stunns38 3609]

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.  

Now, this is how you pack in multiple humble brags ….kidding

[Captain Ron 12935]

This thread is making me glad I stopped flying this flying cow patty years ago. I've felt their customer service has been going steadily downhill and this is just a complete joke. And the lack of seat assignment puts the onus on the traveler way more for something I am paying a shit ton of money for.

 

11 hours ago, sidis said:

Everyone is doing it including American ...

Not nearly at the level that SWA is doing it right now. They are on a galactically incompetent level right now. Trying to say "well so do the other carriers..." isn't even logically close to the same thing right now.

 

16 hours ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

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. 

I flew in last night around 10 PM and that stack you see is the AA luggage. It was finally touching the 3rd carousel by the time I got in. And the SWA area was a lot worse than you see between 3 and 4.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Captain Ron

[Stunns38 3609]

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

Parts of the Fed Govt still uses software from the 90s, and when they actually update, the “new” systems/software is already antiquated.

[Aqua Buddha 14640]

6 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

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.  

The unassigned seats and the point to point system are literally chiseled in stone at SWA and I don't get it.  They refuse to even consider anything otherwise.  If they were great ideas, other people would be stealing them.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13536]

The unassigned seats were fine back in the day when SWA didn't care which flight you jumped on. I recall in the old days of flying between HOU and DAL, when checking in, they would just put you on the next flight leaving in 20 minutes.  Now that you basically have to fly on your assigned flight, why not have reserved seats.

[Stunns38 3609]

The unassigned seats were fine back in the day when SWA didn't care which flight you jumped on. I recall in the old days of flying between HOU and DAL, when checking in, they would just put you on the next flight leaving in 20 minutes.  Now that you basically have to fly on your assigned flight, why not have reserved seats.

Remember those big ass plastic boarding passes?

[Rimbo 26174]

2 hours ago, GreenspointTexas said:

Its almost like flying around xmas is chaotic or something?

Yeah but not usually this bad. And not usually for just one airline (except China Eastern... worst airline I've ever flown, and second place is very distant)

[Pancho 45195]

Was flying a 5am flight from LAS-SJC. A lady across the aisle was saving 2 seats for her son and husband. A Dad and son get on and dad is adamant about sitting in that specific seat. Dad gets louder and louder “YOU CAN’T SAVE SEATS! I WANT TO SIT HERE!” The son is very, very embarrassed. Well, the lady ended up moving to the row behind her. By the time her husband and son got on, the only seats near her were with me. Husband sits next to me (big, muscular bro) and he starts going in on the dad as loud as he could. The rude dad’s son puts his hoodie over his head because he’s so embarrassed. Husband kept telling teh son “sorry your dad is a prick” as loud as possible. (After the flight took off, the son moved)

the entire time I’m going “it’s fucking 5am in the morning! What the fuck is going on here?!?!” That’s when I began my email to Soufwest wondering why they need assigned seats and not a free for all like a fucking bus. 

[Blotto 23608]

41 minutes ago, The Dog said:

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.

I'm inclined to defer to your subject matter expertise, but I struggle to comprehend that we don't have adequate computing technology to automate a process that is currently being done by hand. We're solving some pretty fucking complex issues today, and you're telling me that some dude making $20/hr with a pencil, eraser, and cell phone cant be replicated in code? Can you give an example of why this is such a herculean task? 

[TexPx 2326]

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!

We spent Xmas night with a close relative who is a SW pilot. They live out in the boonies. He’s been off since last Tue. and was scheduled for a flight today. He hadn’t checked his emails in four days. He checked Mon. AM while we were having coffee. The ensuing eruption of profanities was amusing and impressive. One of them basically said they weren’t able to book accommodations for any layovers so good luck.

Of course, by Mon. eve his flight was cancelled. He’s been bitching about their archaic routing/scheduling system for years.

[Rimbo 26174]

1 hour ago, Hefeweizen said:

I always thought southwest sucked but now it’s aggy level ineptitude.  Unbelievable.  There needs to be accountability at some point for these fuckos.

there's a reason for that

[Captainant 27885]

27 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

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.

 

 

This is the root of the problem for SWA and many other dusty-ass enterprise softwares like what Buzzrock alluded to: a refusal to re-evaluate old decisions on requirements that results in significant drift from actually meeting your business outcome. They'll go to the fucking matt to DEMAND that some old reporting chain be maintained because "it's business CRITICAL!!!" only to find out later that nobody's looked at that fucking dashboard or checked that inbox for years.

There's an insane degree of old and vestigial processes and softwares that old organizations (not just businesses) are infested with. There's not nearly enough people willing or able to take on the risk of rearchitecting a solution to meet the business requirements of TODAY, rather than desperately patching a system built for 20th century requirements.

It's going to be a fascinating case study in institutional failure as we learn more about SWA's refusal to modernize

[Rimbo 26174]

9 minutes ago, Blotto said:

I'm inclined to defer to your subject matter expertise, but I struggle to comprehend that we don't have adequate computing technology to automate a process that is currently being done by hand. We're solving some pretty fucking complex issues today, and you're telling me that some dude making $20/hr with a pencil, eraser, and cell phone cant be replicated in code? Can you give an example of why this is such a herculean task? 

you did see where @The Dogsaid can be easily automated, right?

[deac_tracy 516]

Flying SW out of SAT tonight and my flight is shockingly not cancelled. It's the only flight flying out of SAT this evening that SW hasn't cancelled yet. Not sure if I should just take the chance and take it or just cancel the flight and book another airline.  Have a layover and would rather not get stranded there during New Years Eve weekend.

[Pescado_Rojo 19452]

2 minutes ago, deac_tracy said:

Flying SW out of SAT tonight and my flight is shockingly not cancelled. It's the only flight flying out of SAT this evening that SW hasn't cancelled yet. Not sure if I should just take the chance and take it or just cancel the flight and book another airline.  Have a layover and would rather not get stranded there during New Years Eve weekend.

I wouldn't get on a SWA flight that wasn't direct right now. You're just asking to get stuck somewhere. 

[Blotto 23608]

3 minutes ago, Rimbo said:

you did see where @The Dogsaid can be easily automated, right?

Its an important distinction, but I'm still inclined to believe the real "difficulties" come  down to finding the money or ROI justification rather than a lack of available technological firepower. And I guess a follow-up question would be, if airlines weren't encumbered with their current business processes, how much easier would it be to  architect and then automate equipment/crew scheduling and IROP procedures from scratch. If that would simplify things, than its basically more a business issue than a tech issue.

What about the manual process that Southwest is forced to implement right now could not be replicated in code if you have the necessary data to make a decision? 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13536]

21 minutes ago, Captainant said:

This is the root of the problem for SWA and many other dusty-ass enterprise softwares like what Buzzrock alluded to: a refusal to re-evaluate old decisions on requirements that results in significant drift from actually meeting your business outcome. They'll go to the fucking matt to DEMAND that some old reporting chain be maintained because "it's business CRITICAL!!!" only to find out later that nobody's looked at that fucking dashboard or checked that inbox for years.

There's an insane degree of old and vestigial processes and softwares that old organizations (not just businesses) are infested with. There's not nearly enough people willing or able to take on the risk of rearchitecting a solution to meet the business requirements of TODAY, rather than desperately patching a system built for 20th century requirements.

It's going to be a fascinating case study in institutional failure as we learn more about SWA's refusal to modernize

Implementers aren't paid to talk the client out of work. And customization almost always adds income to their work. In my experience is the company's leadership, especially from the IT leaders, in not pushing for process changes and retraining employees.  If they say that report or process is critical, let them have it.

[BrickHorn 18298]

30 minutes ago, Pancho said:

Was flying a 5am flight from LAS-SJC. A lady across the aisle was saving 2 seats for her son and husband. A Dad and son get on and dad is adamant about sitting in that specific seat. Dad gets louder and louder “YOU CAN’T SAVE SEATS! I WANT TO SIT HERE!” The son is very, very embarrassed. Well, the lady ended up moving to the row behind her. By the time her husband and son got on, the only seats near her were with me. Husband sits next to me (big, muscular bro) and he starts going in on the dad as loud as he could. The rude dad’s son puts his hoodie over his head because he’s so embarrassed. Husband kept telling teh son “sorry your dad is a prick” as loud as possible. (After the flight took off, the son moved)

the entire time I’m going “it’s fucking 5am in the morning! What the fuck is going on here?!?!” That’s when I began my email to Soufwest wondering why they need assigned seats and not a free for all like a fucking bus. 

A big problem with the SWA system is the gamesmanship. Saving seats, F5-ing the check-in screen 24 hours before boarding, and dubious preboards.

I get it for folks who have a legit disability. No issue there. But on SWA, if you’re skittish or shameless, you can board and choose your preferred seat before all the people who paid 2x for priority. Bonus points if you bring along a lapdog in one of those “Emotional Support Animal” harnesses. 

We all have problems, Snowflake. Board with the riffraff and self-medicate with booze like the rest of us do.

Edited December 27, 2022 by BrickHorn

[Upgrayedd 5822]

47 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The unassigned seats were fine back in the day when SWA didn't care which flight you jumped on. I recall in the old days of flying between HOU and DAL, when checking in, they would just put you on the next flight leaving in 20 minutes.  Now that you basically have to fly on your assigned flight, why not have reserved seats.

Not exactly.  If you are A List Preferred, you can jump on an earlier flight if there is room.   Use that feature quite a bit.

[Buzzrock 15014]

I'm inclined to defer to your subject matter expertise, but I struggle to comprehend that we don't have adequate computing technology to automate a process that is currently being done by hand. We're solving some pretty fucking complex issues today, and you're telling me that some dude making $20/hr with a pencil, eraser, and cell phone cant be replicated in code? Can you give an example of why this is such a herculean task? 

There’s a lot of shitty software out there. It has nothing to do with computational power.

[Captainant 27885]

3 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Implementers aren't paid to talk the client out of work. And customization almost always adds income to their work. In my experience is the company's leadership, especially from the IT leaders, in not pushing for process changes and retraining employees.  If they say that report or process is critical, let them have it.

What you're describing is why it's extremely dangerous to outsource for your main engineering talent and effort. It's also why I've never EVER seen a successful TCS or accenture engagement lol. They'll happily bill you millions for a hot steaming pile of shit, because some idiot MBA signed a SOW to throw money at his problem that he doesn't understand or really give a shit to learn about. And nevermind that it only further cements terrible legacy tech debt, because now there's even more sunk cost fallacy to influence decision making

Sure, you can keep kicking the can down the road, and sure it'll probably get you to next quarter when you'll FINALLY have bandwidth to handle it (yeah right lmao), but this SWA debacle is where that leads.

[Stunns38 3609]

Finally on flight, it’s about 70% full. Utterly ridiculous that this isn’t a packed-full flight since at least 6 other morning flights to MDW were cancelled.

And of course, you have an asshole who wants the whole row to himself and gets pissed that I took the aisle seat. The Spirit airline passenger type.

[Buzzrock 15014]

What you're describing is why it's extremely dangerous to outsource for your main engineering talent and effort. It's also why I've never EVER seen a successful TCS or accenture engagement lol. They'll happily bill you millions for a hot steaming pile of shit, because some idiot MBA signed a SOW to throw money at his problem that he doesn't understand or really give a shit to learn about. And nevermind that it only further cements terrible legacy tech debt, because now there's even more sunk cost fallacy to influence decision making
Sure, you can keep kicking the can down the road, and sure it'll probably get you to next quarter when you'll FINALLY have bandwidth to handle it (yeah right lmao), but this SWA debacle is where that leads.

Stern. Stern but fair.

[Bateshorn 9942]

Open seating is in theory second fastest way to board a plane, beyond outside in, back to front, which nobody does in practice because of boarding groups and status.  But it doesn’t do you a lot of good if your plane doesn’t actually fucking fly because of complete system collapse.

 

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Bateshorn

[fattyflattie 4639]

19 minutes ago, Stunns38 said:

And of course, you have an asshole who wants the whole row to himself and gets pissed that I took the aisle seat.

lol wut?  Dude hasn't flown in last 18 months or what?  Elbows to assholes on every flight since they opened back up after Covid. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13536]

1 hour ago, Pancho said:

Was flying a 5am flight from LAS-SJC. A lady across the aisle was saving 2 seats for her son and husband. A Dad and son get on and dad is adamant about sitting in that specific seat. Dad gets louder and louder “YOU CAN’T SAVE SEATS! I WANT TO SIT HERE!” The son is very, very embarrassed. Well, the lady ended up moving to the row behind her. By the time her husband and son got on, the only seats near her were with me. Husband sits next to me (big, muscular bro) and he starts going in on the dad as loud as he could. The rude dad’s son puts his hoodie over his head because he’s so embarrassed. Husband kept telling teh son “sorry your dad is a prick” as loud as possible. (After the flight took off, the son moved)

the entire time I’m going “it’s fucking 5am in the morning! What the fuck is going on here?!?!” That’s when I began my email to Soufwest wondering why they need assigned seats and not a free for all like a fucking bus. 

Disagree with your assessment of the situation. At the end of the day, it's open seating on SWA which means no saving seats. Have the whole family board together if you want to sit together. If the other 2 are further back in line, then they're stuck with whatever is available when they board. Or the lady should have moved back to a later boarding group.

Still I wouldn't make a scene about forcing someone to give up saved seats. I accept that many people want to break the spirit of the rules.

[Chopper 17319]

Looking forward to SWA's 2023 marketing campaign.

Southwest Airlines: The Spirit of today, the Frontier of tomorrow.

[BearSchlong 8134]

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.

AA is pretty automated, cancelled flights get automatically rescheduled IIRC.

[Chopper 17319]

 

[HornPhD 1370]

1 hour ago, Stunns38 said:

Remember those big ass plastic boarding passes?

And the party seats 

[The Dog 44176]

15 minutes ago, BearSchlong said:

AA is pretty automated, cancelled flights get automatically rescheduled IIRC.

Yeah so is UAL - both send you a notification to your phone and you can select the new flight they assigned you or a new one within the app.

SW should have been able to provide this on some level for most passengers even if it likely gave them some fucky routings. 

[Pancho 45195]

25 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Disagree with your assessment of the situation. At the end of the day, it's open seating on SWA which means no saving seats. Have the whole family board together if you want to sit together. If the other 2 are further back in line, then they're stuck with whatever is available when they board. Or the lady should have moved back to a later boarding group.

Still I wouldn't make a scene about forcing someone to give up saved seats. I accept that many people want to break the spirit of the rules.

My assessment of the situation is that dad is a prick and I wanted his ass kicked for making a scene out of something so dumb.

my thoughts on seating with Soufwest occurred years ago. 

[SimonBolivar 10961]

43 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

lol wut?  Dude hasn't flown in last 18 months or what?  Elbows to assholes on every flight since they opened back up after Covid. 

Unless you are flying VivaAerobus to MXC from DFW then you get a whole row to yourself.

[Chopper 17319]

Why Southwest is melting down | CNN Business
 

NOT mentioned in the article is that they seem to run on a shoestring staff, and their point-to-point flight system leaves them highly vulnerable to a polar vortex.

Quote

...But Southwest (LUV) also hurt itself with an aggressive schedule and by underinvesting in its operations.

Southwest’s schedule includes shorter flights with tighter turnaround times, which are causing some of the problems, Kathleen Bangs, a FlightAware spokesperson, told CNN.

“Those turnaround times bog things down,” Bangs said.

Stranded customers have been unable to get through to Southwest’s customer service lines to rebook flights or find lost baggage.

Quote

Employees also said they have not been able to communicate with the airline, the president of the union that represents Southwest’s Flight Attendants told CNN Monday.

“The phone system the company uses is just not working,” Lyn Montgomery, President of TWU Local 556, told CNN’s Pamela Brown. “They’re just not manned with enough manpower in order to give the scheduling changes to flight attendants, and that’s created a ripple effect that is creating chaos throughout the nation.”

The problems Southwest faces have been brewing for a long time, said Captain Casey Murray, the president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.

Quote

“We’ve been having these issues for the past 20 months,” he told CNN. “We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”

He said the airline’s operations haven’t changed much since the 1990s.

“It’s phones, it’s computers, it’s processing power, it’s the programs used to connect us to airplanes – that’s where the problem lies, and it’s systemic throughout the whole airline,” he said.

Quote

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, in a message to employees obtained by CNN, acknowledged many of Murray’s concerns, and promised the company will invest in better systems.

“Part of what we’re suffering is a lack of tools,” Jordan told employees. “We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that.”

He said the airline is “committed to and invested in” improving its systems, but “we need to be able to produce solutions faster.”

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Chopper

[Skipper 6249]

The CEO bitching about the "lack of better tools" is pathetic.  That's your responsibility buddy. I hope the DOT rakes them over the coals.  This kind of event was 100% foreseeable and frankly should have been anticipated.  It's fucking winter.  This happens.   The fact that a winter event that brought no freezing precipitation to Texas results in the cancellation of a 50 min DAL to SAT flight 7 days later is insane.  Russian military command is laughing at their logistics.   Thank goodness I was able to just cancel our trip and start making plans to have fun locally (since I've already told all clients I'm out of pocket Thurs/Fri) and not stuck somewhere.   Feel really sorry for all the people just trying to get home - especially those traveling with kids.  Just absolutely inexcusable.

[Samson's Wig 3195]

I hate flying, passionately.  I've always struggled with sinus problems, and flying can be excruciatingly painful.  But, it was the security measures that have been put in place over the last two decades that really ruined it for me.  It takes too fucking long to fly, which cuts into the convenience aspect mightily for most domestic flights.  The ROI for flying just isn't always there for me.  If I can drive there in ten hours and the entire flying experience is 8 hours door to door, I'll take the car every time.

I lose the battle every time when I suggest we drive somewhere, as the rest of the family hates driving.  I had hopes that this fiasco was my opportunity. We're supposed to head up Ontario to see the family on Thursday, flying Delta from Austin to Detroit and then driving into Canada.  I suggested that we drive avoid all of the shenanigans (mostly concerned that we won't have a rental car available when we get to Detroit in spite of the reservation).  No dice.   Not only will be going to the airport at 4:00AM on Thursday, we will be checking bags too, because how can you possibly go to Canada in winter with a small suitcase?   I just want to cancel the whole thing and lie on the couch watching sports for the week.  But alas.   Now I'm going to have to work overtime to not lose my shit when we inevitably lose a suitcase, can't get a rental car, or otherwise get stranded.

[tx ind 7013]

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

-Bob Jordan

[Homercles 10206]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

What you're describing is why it's extremely dangerous to outsource for your main engineering talent and effort. It's also why I've never EVER seen a successful TCS or accenture engagement lol. They'll happily bill you millions for a hot steaming pile of shit, because some idiot MBA signed a SOW to throw money at his problem that he doesn't understand or really give a shit to learn about. And nevermind that it only further cements terrible legacy tech debt, because now there's even more sunk cost fallacy to influence decision making

Sure, you can keep kicking the can down the road, and sure it'll probably get you to next quarter when you'll FINALLY have bandwidth to handle it (yeah right lmao), but this SWA debacle is where that leads.

This.  One of my core roles is managing the outside spend budget for two orgs…mine (data engineering) and shitsville (process engineering).  
 

My team has carefully curated talent in dev and deploy for hybrid cloud organized federally…we manage the core ETL/Services and govern the federated workspaces.  We spend our money on core licenses and one partner that is brought in hourly as staff aug for specialized tools or pipeline optimization…they build in our ecosystem using the same tools available to all.  

Shitsville pays ‘E2E’ vendors a flat quarterly rate to outsource processes and what they call data science…most of what they produce runs in legacy VMs using R with hard-coded credentials in plain text that crashes every time a corp-mandated password change rolls out.  

Working with that team is like The Front Fell Off since a wave hit it at sea and where the mess is ‘not in the environment’

Edited December 27, 2022 by Homercles

[Pancho 45195]

What happens to unused Soufwest credit?

[Homercles 10206]

6 minutes ago, Pancho said:

What happens to unused Soufwest credit?

[Ghost of LL 15565]

3 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

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. 

That's essentially right.  But I would add a little bit of context.

There was an initiative in the very late-1990s to update software across a number of departments.  They went with Sabre, which has a bunch of the platforms that were originally developed for American.  The problem with that is that it's somewhat off-the-rack; the Sabre platform isn't well optimized for Southwest's operation.  

Then Southwest went ahead and bought out airTran.  It did that for a couple of reasons: (1) to eliminate a competitor in Florida, and (2) to get its international routines.  But a nice side benefit was that it got them all of airTran's systems, which were set up for international routes and were generally a better fit for Southwest's operation.

But none of it is set up for a route network of Southwest's modern complexity.  And so you basically have three systems that are kind of all duct taped together.  Absolutely none of them are state-of-the-art.

Regardless, the observation is correct that crew scheduling and dispatch are notoriously difficult.  Every airline has a meltdown from time to time.  For those saying that they'll never fly Southwest again and extolling the virtues of Delta, you must not remember Delta's own holiday meltdown from just two years ago.

2 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

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. 

Tell me you've never been to Lufthansa's First Class Terminal at FRA or the al Safwa lounge at DOH without telling me.

[hookemATL 11944]

10 minutes ago, Pancho said:

What happens to unused Soufwest credit?

Probably as valuable as a Schrute Buck or one of these:

 

[Helobious 9482]

15 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

I hate flying, passionately.  I've always struggled with sinus problems, and flying can be excruciatingly painful.  But, it was the security measures that have been put in place over the last two decades that really ruined it for me.  It takes too fucking long to fly, which cuts into the convenience aspect mightily for most domestic flights.  The ROI for flying just isn't always there for me.  If I can drive there in ten hours and the entire flying experience is 8 hours door to door, I'll take the car every time.

I lose the battle every time when I suggest we drive somewhere, as the rest of the family hates driving.  I had hopes that this fiasco was my opportunity. We're supposed to head up Ontario to see the family on Thursday, flying Delta from Austin to Detroit and then driving into Canada.  I suggested that we drive avoid all of the shenanigans (mostly concerned that we won't have a rental car available when we get to Detroit in spite of the reservation).  No dice.   Not only will be going to the airport at 4:00AM on Thursday, we will be checking bags too, because how can you possibly go to Canada in winter with a small suitcase?   I just want to cancel the whole thing and lie on the couch watching sports for the week.  But alas.   Now I'm going to have to work overtime to not lose my shit when we inevitably lose a suitcase, can't get a rental car, or otherwise get stranded.

Driving Texas to Canada in winter sounds miserable and dangerous. It’s hard for driving to beat flying in most cases imo. In September I was asleep in my bed in San Antonio at 5 AM and in the middle of Times Square by noon that day. 

[The Dog 44176]

3 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

Regardless, the observation is correct that crew scheduling and dispatch are notoriously difficult.  Every airline has a meltdown from time to time.  For those saying that they'll never fly Southwest again and extolling the virtues of Delta, you must not remember Delta's own holiday meltdown from just two years ago.

2 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

Are the two even really comparable though? Delta's was considered a "meltdown" with 10-20% of their flights cancelled over several days.

Southwest is sitting at 63% so far today and it appears will be more of the same tomorrow.

I'm just astonished that Southwest can't seem to "unfuck" their operation until next week. 

[Chopper 17319]

11 minutes ago, Pancho said:

What happens to unused Soufwest credit?

From this latest fiasco or in general? If it's from the latest ongoings, I'd say TBD, pending any USDOT action. If they're only offering you airline credit for a flight that they canceled because their own operation is f'd up, insist they give you a refund.

[Pancho 45195]

8 minutes ago, hookemATL said:

Probably as valuable as a Schrute Buck or one of these:

 

Those are still good at the Sonics in Gainesville 

[Js1 85654]

7 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Driving Texas to Canada in winter sounds miserable and dangerous. It’s hard for driving to beat flying in most cases imo. In September I was asleep in my bed in San Antonio at 5 AM and in the middle of Times Square by noon that day. 

Yeah you run into a lot of other problems trying to drive in the winter time, especially south to north. Also a much higher chance of getting into a catastrophic car accident driving 10 hours then getting on a plane and dealing with the hassle. 

[MNLonghornFUKM 8835]

I hate flying, passionately.  I've always struggled with sinus problems, and flying can be excruciatingly painful.  But, it was the security measures that have been put in place over the last two decades that really ruined it for me.  It takes too fucking long to fly, which cuts into the convenience aspect mightily for most domestic flights.  The ROI for flying just isn't always there for me.  If I can drive there in ten hours and the entire flying experience is 8 hours door to door, I'll take the car every time.
I lose the battle every time when I suggest we drive somewhere, as the rest of the family hates driving.  I had hopes that this fiasco was my opportunity. We're supposed to head up Ontario to see the family on Thursday, flying Delta from Austin to Detroit and then driving into Canada.  I suggested that we drive avoid all of the shenanigans (mostly concerned that we won't have a rental car available when we get to Detroit in spite of the reservation).  No dice.   Not only will be going to the airport at 4:00AM on Thursday, we will be checking bags too, because how can you possibly go to Canada in winter with a small suitcase?   I just want to cancel the whole thing and lie on the couch watching sports for the week.  But alas.   Now I'm going to have to work overtime to not lose my shit when we inevitably lose a suitcase, can't get a rental car, or otherwise get stranded.

I drove to Orlando from MN in march of 2021 which was 26 hrs one way. That’s too far and you have to go through Atlanta. We will fly to Florida from here on out.

But I’d probably drive to Texas before flying there. 16 hrs one way but it’s a damn easy drive and you don’t have to deal with the airport or any major metros

[Ghost of LL 15565]

2 minutes ago, The Dog said:

Are the two even really comparable though? Delta's was considered a "meltdown" with 10-20% of their flights cancelled over several days.

Southwest is sitting at 63% so far today and it appears will be more of the same tomorrow.

I'm just astonished that Southwest can't seem to "unfuck" their operation until next week. 

Well, yeah, they're comparable--you just compared them.  Southwest's is obviously worse from a numerical standpoint.  I'd observe, however, that Delta's system (i.e., a hub-and-spoke system that has a lot of low-frequency routes) means that it's generally going to avoid the type of contagion that Southwest has suffered.  Regardless--they're both pretty serious meltdowns.

But yeah--it doesn't surprise me that it's going to take time for Southwest's system to get back up and running.  The only thing comparable to this that I can think of is 9/11.  And that took about a week to get everyone back to where they needed to be (once the planes were cleared to fly again, obviously).  And that was with a vastly less complex route map.