The Chicago Airport Winter Weather Rebooking Plan: U.S. Airlines, Spirit, Midwest Airlines, and the Chicago O’Hare International Airport

Key US airlines have issued travel waivers in order to protect themselves from the brutal “bomb Cyclone” of wintry weather in the Midwest and other regions this week.

The important aviation hub of Chicago is forecast to be one of the cities hit the hardest, with the National Weather Service warning of the potential for a blizzard.

By Tuesday morning, United Airlines, headquartered in Chicago, was offering four separate winter weather waivers: One in the Midwest, one for Texas, one for the East Coast and another for Central and Northwest US.

United will no longer charge change fees or fare differences for modified bookings within the original ticket cabin and between the same cities in a short rebooking window this month.

The waiver is for travel that was booked from December 22 to December 25. Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, El Paso and Houston are some of the airports covered by the waiver.

Waivers for travel in, out or through almost 30 airports in the Midwest as well as another 30 destinations in the Northeast have been issued by the company. More details on American’s website.

, the discount carrier based in Queens, New York, issued a “Midwest Winter Weather Fee Waiver” for people changing flights in or out of four airports — Chicago (ORD); Kansas City (MCI); Milwaukee (MKE); and Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP). Click here for more on JetBlue’s waiver.

There is only a winter weather waivers for flights to and from Seattle because of the heavy snow. If you want to travel on December 20 you must have purchased tickets by December 18. You can click here for more on Alaska Airlines.

, the discount carrier headquartered in Miramar, Florida, issued a waiver for a half dozen Midwest airports for travel between December 21 and December 23. Details on Spirit’s website.

An arctic blast and a rapidly intensifying winter storm have come at an unfortunate time for travelers trying to join family and friends for the holidays.

There were over 3, thousand flights canceled in the wake of post- Christmas travel chaos on Monday, with 2,905 of those being Southwest flights.

Airports in Chicago and Denver saw the bulk of cancellations and delays on Thursday. Chicago O’Hare International Airport was logging average delays Thursday of almost three hours due to snow and ice.

Temperatures at the O’Hare dropped to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (-13 Celsius) around 5 p.m. local time. Snow and freezing fog were reported by the National Weather Service.

The FAA said departing aircraft at Dallas Love, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver and Minneapolis airports require a spraying of de-icing fluid for safe travel.

“Flight activity at #LaGuardiaAirport may be disrupted by heavy rain and strong winds later today and Friday. Travelers are asked to confirm flight status with their airline before arriving at the airport. Both John F. Kennedy and Newark Airport had similar notices.

For those whose flights are still scheduled to fly, the Transportation Security Administration is recommending that passengers arrive at the airport earlier than usual.

In an interview with reporters, John Busch, the federal security director of Reagan National Airport, said that all airports are expecting to be busy this holiday season. We expect Friday 30th to be a busy day as we are expecting some of our busiest days this week ahead of the New Year’s holiday.

Greyhound Advisory for Midwest Interlines: Maria Ihekwaba’s Journey to Clear Lake, Iowa, Was Worried About Last Minute Snowstorms

Maria Ihekwaba, who was traveling from Chicago to Clear Lake, Iowa, with her granddaughter on Thursday morning, told CNN she was trying to depart as soon as possible.

Traveler Kari Lucas, from San Diego, told CNN she was visiting her sister and brother-in-law, but cut the trip short as she didn’t want to get caught in the impending weather.

She said that she was worried because San Diego doesn’t get these snowstorms. I dislike it being trapped in the airport for long periods of time.

Greyhound issued a service alert on Thursday warning customers that those traveling in the Midwest over the next two days may have their trips delayed or canceled altogether.

A company alert posted here lists more than 20 cities as being impacted. It advised passengers to check bustracker.greyhound.com for the latest information about specific journeys.

• Charleston, West Virginia• Chicago• Cleveland• Dallas• Danville, Illinois• Davenport, Iowa• Denver• Detroit• Indianapolis• Kansas City• Minneapolis• St. Louis• Wichita, Kansas

If a customer wants to change their reservation during the modified schedule, they will be charged additional charges but Amtrak will waive them.

A Passenger whose Flight to Los Angeles for Alaska Airlines is Cancelled by the New York Superfluids: Scott Phillips

Buffalo International Airport, which is hard hit by the recent floods in western New York, is not going to resume passenger flights before 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

The ground stops were posted because of deicing in Charlotte Douglas International Airport and Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC.

Airlines have issued winter weather waivers allowing passengers to rebook at no cost within a limited time period. There are links to the airline waivers and air travel strategies here.

A historic winter storm has tangled holiday travel and brought dangerous conditions to a big chunk of the United States, but no airline has struggled more to navigate the Christmas holiday rush than Southwest Airlines.

According to Scott’s Cheap Flights, the number of flights in the sky is actually down more than 15 or 20%, but what many don’t realize is that travel volume is still down.

When he woke up on Friday, he discovered that his Alaska Airlines flight to Seattle had been canceled, even though he was scheduled to fly to Los Angeles to visit family.

Phillips says he feels mostly disappointment but not a lot of surprise. “I knew the weather was supposed to be bad, but I was hoping I’d get in before the freezing rain hit,” he added.

He is going to make the best of it, as he now plans to attend a holiday party in Seattle rather than miss it.

The Denver International Airshow: A Misleading Event with a Funnel, Suprising Sounding Atmospheric-Like Fiddle

Denver International was keeping a sense of humor during the stressful event, posting a tweet of what appeared to be an airport worker playing “Jingle Bells” on a fiddle.

The storm’s effects in parts of the West are abating, though. The temperature was well above freezing at 1 pm at Denver International.

This megablast of winter weather across the eastern two-thirds of the nation is forecast to slowly moderate into the last week of the year. There were nearly 200 cancellation that were made before 3 pm.

Amtrak’s last service alert was posted Friday. It said then the severe weather “has caused Amtrak to make several service and cancellations from now through Sunday, December 25.”

If they’re flying with Southwest Airlines, air travelers looking for clear skies on Tuesday will have to wait at least a few more days.

Passengers say lack of communication from the company has been especially frustrating. Some didn’t know their flight had been canceled until they happened to check the status online. Others say they waited hours to speak to a Southwest representative on the phone.

Chief among them are outdated internal processes and information technology. Southwest’s scheduling system hasn’t changed much since the 1990s, according to Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.

Southwest Airlines Customer Service: When Can We Reach You? Jay McVay, CEO, and Founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights

“We had a tough day today. Jordan said in an interview Monday evening that there would be another hard day tomorrow as they work their way out of the situation.

Several people at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport spoke to CNN’s Nick Valencia on Thursday about their travel experiences with Southwest this holiday season.

Customers couldn’t speak to a representative because calls made by CNN to Southwest customer service did not go through. Southwest told CNN it is “fully staffed to answer calls.”

If you’ve been left in the lurch and your efforts to reach a customer service agent are not going anywhere, the founder of Scott’s Cheap flights suggests calling an international number.

“The main hotline for US airlines will be clogged with other passengers getting rebooked. To get through to an agent quickly, call any one of the airline’s dozens of international offices,” Scott Keyes said.

“As the storm continued to sweep across the country it continued to impact many of our larger stations and so the cancellations just compiled one after another to 100 to 150 to 1,000,” Jay McVay said in a press conference at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport on Monday night.

“With those cancellation we end up with flight crews and airplanes that are out of place and not in the cities that they need to be in to run our operations.”

McVay said that safety is the company’s first priority. “We want to make sure that we operate these flights safely and that we have the flight crews that have legal and sufficient time to operate these flights,” he stated.

“We will do everything that we need to do to right the challenges that we’ve had right now,” he said, including “hotels, ride assistance, vans … rental cars to try and make sure these folks get home as quickly as possible.”

“If you’ve already left, take care of yourself, do what you need to do for your family, keep your receipts,” McVay relayed. “We will make sure they are taken care of, that is not a question.”

The Meltdown by Southwest Airlines: A Story of 20 Years After the Appearance of the First Flights & Other Mishaps

An announcement made in the terminal prior to the news conference apologized to customers, and said the next available SWA seats are on Saturday, December 31st and later. The agent said Southwest would be providing buses to area hotels and assured that “we will have sufficient rooms for all customers who are affected by this disruption.”

The United State Department of Transportation (USDOT) issued a statement on Monday’s massive flight cancellations by Southwest Airlines, saying the agency is “concerned”.

Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilot Association, says the blame for Southwest’s meltdown should be placed on the company’s reliance on tech and procedures from the ’90s, when the company was half its size.

“We’ve been having these issues for the past 20 months,” he told CNN. These kinds of meltdowns occur more and more frequently because of outdated processes and outdated IT.

He said the airline’s processes haven’t changed since the 1990s. The problem lies in the processing power used to connect us to airplanes, and it is a problem throughout the entire airline.

“I mean, it’s just par for the course. This is flight travel, everyone’s trying to get everywhere at the same time. Southwest took the lion’s share of this year’s travel unfortunate situation, Hister told CNN.

“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.”

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.

Jordan said that part of the problem was a lack of tools. There was a lot of discussion about modernizing the operation.

Gary Kelly, the former CEO, told Wall Street analysts that he had made adjustments in order to prevent a meltdown in the future.

“We have reined in our capacity plans to adjust to the current staffing environment, and our ontime performance has improved, accordingly,” said Kelly on October 21. We are close to achieving our goal of 5,000 new employees by the end of the year, and we are currently more than halfway there.

Delta Airlines Cannot Fly on Merely for the Fourth of July Holidays, as Thrifty Traveler Learned on Monday (via the Denver7 News)

Kyle Potter, executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, called it an incredibly complex task for an airline with a network as vast as Southwest’s to coordinate staffing and scheduling, particularly after weather delays.

But with many areas seeing clear skies on Monday, the airline would seem to have few obvious reasons to cancel so many flights. Potter says that it is a full-blown meltdown.

The airline said in a statement Monday that it will fly about one-third of its schedule for the next several days as it continues to recover its operations.

From Houston, Texas, and Tampa, Fla., to Cleveland, Ohio, and Denver, Colo., passengers are sharing photos and video of overwhelmed baggage claim areas and long lines at reservation counters. The customer service phone line at Southwest took more than two hours to answer, according to Colorado Public Radio.

“I’m okay with these travel situations and fly on by myself when it’s just me, but when my one-year-old has to suffer through it because of ineptitude and mismanagement, that becomes personal,” Southwest passenger Joshua Caudle, who said he was unsure when they would be able to leave Denver, said on Denver7 News. I won’t do this with that company again.

The Southwest passenger who was trying to fly from Missouri to Denver missed out on Christmas with her family due to several delays and canceled flights at the Kansas City International Airport. She said on social media that her luggage was sent to Denver without her.

Thousands of Delta pilots picketed at major airports this summer, calling for higher pay and highlighting staff concerns as passengers faced flight cancellations during the Fourth of July holiday rush. Last month, Delta pilots voted to authorize a strike after negotiations for a new contract were paused.

Can Travel Disruption go Beyond Freed and Freed? An Attorney-General Explains Southwest Airlines’ Decision to Rethink Its Flying Program

The cap runs through Saturday and applies in many of the US and Latin American markets where Southwest also flies. Josh Freed was not able to provide a dollar amount for the cap.

One traveler posted a picture of flights from San DIEGO to ORLANDO that cost more than $2,000. The passenger was looking to rebook a canceled Southwest flight.

Southwest has a policy not to rebook customers on other airlines. Southwest Airlines does not have interline agreements with other carriers that would allow its agents to rebook passengers on a different airline, narrowing the options for stranded passengers.

“After a couple of days of trying to operate as much of our full schedule as possible, we reached a decision to reduce our flying to catch up,” he said.

“Clearly, we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what’s happening right now.”

“The airline said to me that they were going to go above and beyond what’s required of them,” Buttigieg said Thursday in an interview with NBC News. “I’m looking to make sure they actually do that, and if they don’t, we are in a position to levy tens of thousands of dollars per violation per passenger in fines.”

If Southwest ignores its promises to reimburse passengers for the cost of alternate transportation, it will be held accountable by the Department.

In June, when thousands of flights were canceled due to staffing shortages, buttigieg met with the CEOs of major domestic airlines and asked them how they would fix operations in writing.

“Employees were left to their own devices. […] He told NPR’s Morning Edition that they hadn’t been given the equipment to do their jobs or the leadership to answer questions.

Questions about how the airline’s systems may allow things to go wrong are not mollified by that. And the Department of Transportation (DOT) is still taking a firm line with Southwest.

Congress is interested in whether the airline can compensate customers. The Senate Commerce Committee will launch an investigation, its chair said on Tuesday.

If your flight was canceled, you have the right to get a cash refund for the full price plus any additional purchases such as bag fees or seat assignments.

The page at Southwest.com/traveldisruption has been set up to allow customers to submit refunds and requests for alternate transportation as well as connecting them to their baggage.

Democratic Sens. Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal, who’ve proposed clarifying such rules during previous flight snafus, issued a statement on Tuesday calling for Southwest to issue “significant monetary compensation” to customers whose holidays “have been ruined.”

The dire situation, which has made passengers frustrated, and caught the eye of government regulators, has grown more dire this week as other major airlines recover from the extreme cold, ice and snow that descended on the United States over the holiday weekend.

“We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made to realign crew, their schedules and our fleet,” it said. “We know our deepest apologies will only go so far, and we are sorry to our employees, customers, and everyone affected by this disruption,” the statement read.

The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which tracks the airlines performance, has found that there has been an increase in cancellation rates over the last couple of years.

The bureau has only released data for 2022 through September. To ensure a fair comparison, CNN only analyzed the carrier’s data from January to September in previous years.

Reply to the Southwest Airlines CEO Pete Buttigieg’s “Meltdown” on Friday, April 19: Flight cancellation cancellations and baggage reunification

Everyone is wondering if Southwest can deliver. As air traffic increases on Friday morning, the picture will become clearer.

It would be a relief for passengers and the company if those planes are in the air again. It’s got a mark on its back.

The top US government officials are not happy about how Southwest got to this point in the aftermath of a massive winter snowstorm that every other major US airline had under control days ago.

The DOT formally warned Southwest Airlines on Thursday that it will face consequences if it fails to make right by stranded and inconvenienced passengers.

In a letter to the Southwest CEO Pete Buttigieg said that officials will take action against the airline if it doesn’t follow through with promised refunds, meals, hotels, and baggage reunification.

Ryan Green, the airline’s chief commercial officer, has promised to rebuild customer relations that have plummeted after the collapse of services.

“My personal apology is the first step of making things right after many plans changed and experiences fell short of your expectations of us,” Green said in a video issued Thursday.

“We’re continuing to work to make this up to you, and you’ll continue to hear about that soon. We’re focused on restoring the levels of reliability and customer experience that you expect of us.

His remarks came as Buttigieg made his own assessment of Southwest’s troubles, calling it a complete “meltdown.”

When asked what he thought about the lack of lines at the Southwest counters at the airport, Hister said: “Maybe speaks to the improvements that they’re trying to make, because there’s not long lines, people aren’t here complaining. Maybe the efforts to redeem themselves are working.

Williams said that he plans to use the airline in the future. “I like Southwest. I mean, the bags are free,” Williams said.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/southwest-flight-cancellations-friday/index.html

The failure of the Southwest Airlines crew scheduling system: A response to Chao’s CNN interview with the Transportation Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation

The internal process that requires multiple departments to manually redesign the airline’s schedule works the vast majority of the time, the airline said in a statement.

The crew scheduling system tool is part of the Southwest software which leaves a lot of work to be done manually when something goes wrong.

The failure of the Southwest Airlines break was described by Elaine Chao, who was secretary of transportation during the Trump administration.

She told CNN it was “a perfect storm of all the things that have been going on with the company. It’s going to take them a long time to rebuild trust with consumers, she said.

Southwest Airlines will take a long time to earn back the trust of the public. While other airlines had to deal with extreme weather, Southwest was in a state of “meltdown” according to the email.

“Southwest says, ‘We will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel and alternate transportation,’” he said. Southwest is vague about how much they will reimburse, so I would avoid expensive hotels or restaurants. Use the internet to find hotels near the airport.

Search for ‘free things to do near me’ on the internet. I don’t want you to pay for any expensive excursions that Southwest won’t reimburse.

Delay and Cancellation of Flights at Denver, Fla, for the Fourth and Fifth Counts of the Month of May 1 in a Strong Weather Event

Flight delays averaged over two and a half hours early Monday afternoon with a maximum delay up to six hours.

About 750 flights originating or destined for the Denver International Airport were either delayed or canceled Monday because of inclement weather, according to FlightAware.

Visibility has been at or below a quarter of a mile all day. The main reason for the delays andcancellings is the freezing fog and low visibility, even though there was light snow overnight.

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Dallas Love Field’s team is ready to treat and clear all surfaces to allow for safe operations. DFW is bracing for the weather.

The weather will also make for treacherous road conditions. There is a chance for ice or sleet in some parts of Texas, warns the National Weather Service. Ice accumulation is expected across at least 15 states, the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center said.