But the company has not offered clear guidelines about what expenses they will cover, only saying that they will honor "reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation (such as rental cars, or tickets on other airlines)."Īnd of course, there's no reimbursement for missing Christmas with your family, or spending a night on an airport floor with a cranky toddler and no luggage. It has also previously committed, for any avoidable cancellation or extreme delay, to rebook passengers at no additional cost, and offer vouchers for meals and hotel accommodations.Īnd Southwest seems willing to cover even more costs for this debacle. Southwest is required by law to offer a full refund for a canceled flight. Customers may be reimbursed for "reasonable" expenses (. The same situation unfolded in this disaster, and many pilots and flight crews took to social media to express frustration with their own company. Pilots were ready to work, but Southwest didn't have planes or routes available for them. There were multiple scheduling meltdowns in the last two years that, while smaller than the Christmas disaster, indicated that Southwest had a problem. Between mid-2017 and mid-2018, the carrier achieved a 13.1 pre-tax margin across its three most profitable. "And it's really just not scaled for an operation that we have today." More evidence for the power of big hubs comes from American Airlines own performance. "We're still using, not only IT from the '90s, but also processes when our airline was a tenth of the size," he said. The president of the union representing Southwest pilots called the Christmas meltdown "catastrophic" but told NPR he, for one, wasn't surprised by it - and neither were most pilots. I'm open to dating another airline." Customers aren't the only ones angry. Now, she says, "I've been thinking about it. "I have 50,000 miles with them," said Hillary Chang, a traveler whose bag is lost in the Southwest disaster vortex. "They're usually pretty good at responding to crises."Ĭustomers are bewildered by how terrible this experience has been. "They've got the best reputation for customer service and management agility," airline analyst Richard Aboulafia told NPR. It was a well-respected - in some cases, even beloved - company. ![]() Southwest isn't a fly-by-night operation, or a bare-bones discount airline where customers have low expectations and misery is part of the bargain. The epic failure of the airline caught many by surprise ![]() The Department of Transportation says it is launching its own investigation into exactly what went wrong. And he said the company clearly needed to accelerate its "already existing plans to upgrade systems." Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan compared the airline's debacle to a "giant puzzle" that needs to be solved. Louis has seen among the biggest increases, although Lambert is not among the airlines largest hubs. Louis before his 1927 transatlantic flight.San Diego isnt an airline hub (it happens to be the largest metropolitan area in the United States without that. Weather The blizzard is just one reason behind the operational meltdown at Southwest Airlinesīy all accounts Southwest was using badly outdated computer systems to manage that complicated system. Southwest Airlines has grown at almost all its largest hubs over the past two years, and St.
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