Winter storm moving west to east across the US forced Southwest Airlines to cancel thousands of flights leaving customers stranding ahead of New Year 2023. The whole chaos gave CEO Bob Jordan, airline staff, and, most importantly, its irate customers on Monday, a holiday nightmare. The suffering in the Southwest appears to be continuing into Tuesday.
How many flights got cancelled?
According to flight tracking website FlightAware, about 8,200 flights had been delayed as of 10:50 p.m. ET on Monday, while more than 3,900 flights within, into, or out of the US had already been cancelled. But a huge portion of those are attributable to Southwest. None of the other US airlines has significantly reduced their schedules or cancelled as many flights as Southwest. As of 10:10 p.m. ET on Monday, FlightAware reported that the Dallas-based airline has cancelled 71% of its scheduled flights, or slightly over 2,900 flights altogether. On Monday afternoon, the airline abruptly cancelled 300 flights within the course of a half-hour.
As of 10:50 p.m. ET on Monday, more than 2,400 of those flights had already been cancelled. The majority of Tuesday’s more than 2,600 flight cancellations for all US carriers had been accounted for at this point. Prior to the chaos on Monday, CEO Jordan informed staff on Christmas Eve that there are a lot of challenges in the business right now.
Crew not in right position?
Jordan in a message, that was seen by CNN told the Southwest employees that part of the suffering was a lack of tools. Jordan told The Wall Street Journal the company plans to operate just over a third of its schedule in upcoming days to give itself the ability for crews to get into the right positions. According to WJS.com, Jordan added that the reduced schedule could be extended. He said that the airlines had a tough day but in all likelihood they will have another tough day tomorrow as they work their way out of this.
Irate passengers
Irate customers have been criticising the airline on social media for long wait times or busy signals when calling customer care. They have also been lodging complains for missing baggage. One traveller told CNN that Southwest had her family on the phone for ten hours. According to CNN, on Monday night, Southwest employees at Denver International Airport announced over the airport terminal speakers that flight rebooking for stranded customers wouldn’t be allowed until Friday and that new reservations wouldn’t be permitted until January 3. Most passengers have been unsuccessful reaching representatives over the phone and the website is also not operational.
Southwest blames winter storm
A spokesperson for Southwest blamed the recent winter storm for the cancellations. As the storm continued to sweep across the country, it continued to impact many of the larger stations and so the cancellations just compiled one after another to 100 to 150 to 1,000, said Jay McVay said at a news conference on Monday night. The spokesperson also added that with those cancellations and as a result, the airlines ended up with flight crews and airplanes that are out of place and not in the cities that they need to be in to continue to run our operations. He promised that the airlines will do everything that it needs to do to right the challenges they have right now. “If you’ve already left, take care of yourself, do what you need to do for your family, keep your receipts,” McVay assured.
Southwest assures customers, employees to make things rights
Southwest in an emailed statement Monday afternoon emphasized on safety of the passengers. The statement said that with consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable. Further, it said that the airlines is working with Safety at the forefront to urgently address wide-scale disruption. On the other side, the statement also added that the airlines will work to make things right for those they have let down, including their own employees. Some of the airports seeing the biggest issues have been Denver, Chicago Midway, Baltimore/Washington, Dallas Love Field, Nashville and Las Vegas.
Stranded Passengers can call airlines’ int’l number
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 has some suggestions to make. Scott Keyes said the main hotline for US airlines will be clogged with other passengers getting rebooked and to get through to an agent quickly, call any one of the airline’s dozens of international offices. Agents can handle your reservation just like US-based ones can, but there’s virtually no wait to get through, Scott keyes added.
