Over Christmas break, a winter storm dropped multiple feet of snow across American cities and airports. Thousands of flights were canceled, but more than 90% of cancellations were hosted by Southwest Airlines. According to flight tracking software, FlightAware, Southwest canceled around 2500 flights. The next highest was SkyWest with 77 flights. The worst part? Southwest may not return to normal as fast as other airlines, costing them thousands of flights and millions of dollars in revenue.
Why won’t Southwest recover for a long time? There are multiple reasons. First, the winter storm hit Southwest’s two major hubs, Chicago Midway Airport and Denver International Airport. Second, a “tripledemic” surged through major cities leaving millions of American citizens with Covid, the flu, and RSV. Southwest’s flights and staff were already stressed, and a shortage of workers pushed them to the limits. Flight crews maxed out the hours they were allowed to fly under federal regulations.
Another possible solution to these seemingly never ending problems could be to update their IT systems. Capitan Casey Murray, the president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, stated that he has seen technology problems for the past 20 months. He also stated that Southwest’s operation hasn’t really changed since 1990. Issues with customer service have been popping up too. With almost every worker at Southwest working to reschedule flights for flight crews, people have struggled to reschedule their own flights.
To recap, Southwest Airlines has had thousands of flights canceled as a result of winter storms and illnesses. The airline doesn’t have enough flight crews to replace all of the canceled flights so they are maxing out their flight hours. One of the solutions could be revamping their IT systems as they haven’t changed much in 30 years.
Do you think it is a good idea to fly Southwest Airlines if you are going on a vacation soon?
Have you ever had a flight canceled? If so, how did it turn out?
Do you think Southwest Airlines is going to change its operation? If so, how?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/business/southwest-airlines-service-meltdown/index.html
Replies
Good topic choice and summary Levi!! I would like to see you reply back to more comments however.
Southwest has always been a reliable choice for me, I never really tried to travel in the winter, besides COVID year, so my flight was already canceled because of that, but they gave us our money back so we could get tickets later on. I hope Southwest does change their cancellation policies because sometimes the weather is still "fliable" and they don't fly.
I feel like it would be a bad idea to travel southwest because you don't know if they will cancel your flight. I have never had a flight cancelled but I have had some family members not go somewhere because of a cancelled flight. I think that the first thing they should do is revamp their IT systems because they are outdated and they need to do something.
If I were going on vacation soon, I would try my best to avoid Southwest Airlines. My family and I have never had to deal with a flight being canceled. I would guess that Southwest Airlines will change something about how they currently operate to avoid a loss of customers.
Personally I have never had a flight canceled but I have had a flight be delayed before. And it ended up being fine it was just a long wait. Right now I don't think it would be a good idea to fly Southwest Airlines if you are going to be going on a vacation soon.
I do not think that it is a good idea to fly southwest right now. We went to Florida not too long ago and our flight got canceled so we had to switch to the frontier. The tickets were much more expensive and we had to leave much earlier in the morning the day we left. I would hope southwest would change, otherwise they won't have any business.
I have flown southwest a number of times and I think the one thing people should take away from planes crashing is that, mistakes happen. There are a lot more car crashes that kill a lot more people every year that you don't hear about. But as soon as an airline's plane crashes people get scared.
It does not sound like a good idea to fly with Southwest Airlines in the near future. I have never had a flight cancelled, but it would be a real bummer if it was. I predict that Southewest will change some things in their operation because they will have to or they will lose business.
I personally think that if I were going on vacation I wouldn't take southwest airlines. I say that because if I was going on vacation my flight would probably get canceled or I would have to wait another hour after my flight was going to leave. I also think that the plane is too crowded and you don’t have a lot of room to sleep or to put stuff.
If I were to be flying soon I don't think I would fly with Southwest because of this. Some of my family has tried to fly Southwest and their flight has been either canceled or delayed tremoundsly. I don't know if Southwest will fix their issues and I'm not sure how they would. I think they are definitely losing customers because of this.
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