Southwest cancels more than 2800 flights, in a "full-blown meltdown."

[sarcasmo]

Snip< Southwest canceled more than 2,870 flights by 8:25 p.m. ET Monday — at least 70% of its schedule for the day, according to flight tracker FlightAware. The disruptions add to chaos that has left people stranded at airports across the country, many of them with little idea of when they can get home or where their bags are.




https://www.npr.org/2022/12/26/1145536902/southwest-cancels-nearly-2-800-flights-in-a-full-blown-meltdown

[Ocelot II]

1. What's the snip?

[sarcasmo]

2. Fixed it with an NPR link

[Ocelot II]

3. Ha, by some coincidence I'm watching a Netflix series

about people stuck in an airport on Christmas on account of a snowstorm. And they are all crabby.

[LonePirate]

4. This is not a weather issue. This is a labor walkout and/or a catastrophic computer system crash.

Weather is not the cause of the problem when no other airlines are experiencing anything close to the magnitude of cancellations as Southwest is.

[sarcasmo]

6. That was my thought too, finding your own bags seems like a strike.

[SoCalDavidS]

5. Cue Steve Martin & John Candy (RIP) nt

[Blue Owl]

7. Has Musk taken over SWA?

[sarcasmo]

8. Find your own luggage would be one of Musk's trial programs.

[TheBlackAdder]

12. And if you complain, you get a permanent ban and you luggage becomes permanently 'lost.'

.

You'll get a $250 voucher, or whatever the max payout for lost luggage is nowadays.

That might buy you a pair of shoes and socks from it. The rest of the loss you'll have to eat.


This is really making the case for 3rd party travel insurance.

.

[progressoid]

9. Short staffed and increased demand

it only takes a few hiccups in the system to cause a cascade failure.

[Grokenstein]

10. We move as far away from our families as we can

and then, during the worst weather of the year, every year, we collectively turn every airport into a Black Friday Walmart.

And wonder why everything goes wrong.

It's insanity.

[Hekate]

11. When you think about it, moving away is a tradition as old as America

[NeoGreen]

13. I would suggest...

..moving away IS America.

[tanyev]

15. I know, right?

We're in Texas, my husband's family is in Canada. We were doing every other Christmas there until we had to fly home the day after the underwear bomber. Traveling at Christmastime was always a hassle, but that was off the charts miserable and then my husband developed a health condition that made traveling even more of a challenge. I finally said, Look, I love your family, I love Canada, but we are not going there for Christmas ever again. Fortunately, his family is not overly sentimental about Christmas and they're fine with it.

[Liberal In Texas]

14. It was the weather.

According to Southwest:

In a statement Monday that opened with "heartfelt apologies," Southwest said that its geography made it "uniquely" vulnerable to the storm, with half of the airports in which it flies affected by winter weather.

"We were fully staffed and prepared for the approaching holiday weekend when the severe weather swept across the continent, where Southwest is the largest carrier in 23 of the top 25 travel markets in the U.S. This forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity," the statement said.

"We anticipate additional changes with an already reduced level of flights as we approach the coming New Year holiday travel period," it noted.

The company also blames a lack of technology. "Part of what we're suffering is a lack of tools. We've talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that," CEO Bob Jordan said in an internal message on Sunday that was reported by several media outlets and the flight attendants' union.

So bad weather caused a requirement to start rescheduling on the fly (no pun intended) and they weren't up to the task.

I haven't flown since the pandemic but in the past Southwest has always been outstanding when weather caused cancellations and delays by getting you out of the airport on a plane to somewhere where you could get on another plane to get to your destination.