The Southwest Experience of the Thanksgiving and Fourth of September 2001, Revealed by Kyle Potter, Managing Editor of Thrifty Traveler

“Every airline across the country, Southwest included, got really small at the start of the pandemic when travel basically fell off a cliff, and they have struggled as travel has rebounded to grow back up to 100% and they’re still not there,” Potter said.

Southwest did worse than its competitors last October. After the October disruption, Southwest canceled hundreds of flights, but competitors returned to normal service.

The airline has had to deal with some issues that have made it hard to accommodate the holiday rush. It is difficult for employees to get reassignments because of that issue.

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.

“This is really as bad as it gets for an airline,” Potter said. There’s a lot of this over the course of the last year or so, when airlines just struggle especially after a storm, but there’s pretty clear skies across the country.

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. At Southwest, the customer service phone line’s hold times averaged more than two hours, sometimes reaching four hours, 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’m never going to work with that company again.

The pilots of Delta protested in major airports this summer in order to get the attention of the staff and highlight their concerns as the holiday rush overtook them. Delta pilots voted last month to authorize a strike after negotiations for a new contract were paused.

The Impact of Tuesday Flight Cancellation on Southwest Airlines, the CEO, and the General Manager of Scott’s Cheap Flights, an Empirical Analysis

If you’re traveling with Southwest Airlines, you will have to wait a few days if you hope for clear skies on Tuesday.

Airports most affected by the Tuesday cancellations are Denver International, followed by Chicago Midway International, Baltimore/Washington International, Nashville International, Dallas Love Field and Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob 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.

“We had a tough day today. In all likelihood we’ll have another tough day tomorrow as we work our way out of this,” Jordan said in an interview Monday evening with WSJ.com.

Passengers were in line at the Southwest ticket counter at the Atlanta airport on Monday when Carlos spoke to them.

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.

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 suggests trying 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.

“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 cancellations and as a result, 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 continue to run our operations.”

McVay said that the company’s first priority right now is safety. He stated that they wanted to make sure that the flights were operated safely and that the flight crew had enough time to operate them.

“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 have left, keep your receipts, take care of yourself, and do what you have to for your family. “We will make sure they are taken care of, that is not a question.”

The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association and the Buffalo International Airport System. A Separation-Airline News Conference During the December 31st Antenna

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 provide buses to area hotels and that there would be enough rooms for everyone.

The Department will look at whether Southwest complies with its customer service plan and if cancellation are controllable.

The president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said in a call to CNN that the problems Southwest is facing have been going on for a long time.

“We’ve been having these issues for the past 20 months,” he said. We have seen these kinds of disasters occur more and more frequently due to the outdated processes and outdated IT.

He said the airline’s processes have not changed 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.”

In western New York, Buffalo International Airport said on its most recent report that it does not plan to resume passenger flights before 11 a.m. Wednesday.

A service alert was issued on Monday by Greyhound stating that a number of its scheduled bus services in the upper northeast will be disrupted or canceled due to winter weather. Buffalo, Cleveland, and Syracuse are affected.

A winter storm that swept across the US was ill-timed for travelers who had started pushing Christmas week flying numbers back toward pre-pandemic levels.

Southwest Airlines is Hiring 5,000 New Employees by Next-Generation Aircraft Loads and Continuum Routes

The phone system the company uses is malfunctioning according to a President of TWU Local 556. “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.

“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.”

Gary Kelly said on the call that the company had made adjustments to make sure a similar problem didn’t happen in the future.

Kelly said that capacity plans had been reined in and the ontime performance had improved. We are currently more than halfway towards the goal of 5,000 new employees by the end of the year, and we are aggressively hiring to do so.

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.