Southwest's Mass Cancellation Today

[TinkOhio]

Southwest suddenly cancelled two thirds of their flights today, and our adult children were caught in the mess. They were looking at their boarding numbers before leaving for the airport this afternoon when their flight suddenly showed up as cancelled. Our kids were able to find a one-way rental and are currently making the 19 hour drive back home. Any idea how to get a refund at this point?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[gorjus121]

It's been going on for days, today being the worst with over 60% of their flights canceled. Glad to hear your kids found a rental to get back home. You may need to call customer service for the refund if it doesn't allow you to online. Be prepared for extremely long wait times. Here was our experience from Friday to Saturday: https://www.disboards.com/threads/flight-canceled-anyone.3904539/

If you have the time, read the comments on SW Facebook page. It's insane.

 

[katallo]

Nightly news said SW has been the worst for cancellations. It will be days before rescheduling. So glad your family was able to drive home,

 

[_19disnA]

If you can't apply for a refund online, you might wait couple of days and call instead. I doubt they expect everyone to be able to get through on the phone today.

Major weather events can result in airplanes being stuck in various airports and not able to get back to their regular rotation. Smaller airlines have fewer airplanes giving them fewer options to replace planes that are out of position.

Personally, I would rather be stuck at an airport that has heat/light/food/bathrooms then be driving on some freeway with feet of snow and stranded cars. Many freeways has sections that were closed and impassable.

 

[Cheburashka]

They're definitely entitled to the refund, since Southwest cancelled on them. The first step is for them to not accept or make any alternative flights in place of the cancelled flights, and to not accept any vouchers, credits, etc. They need to hold out and be clear that they need a full refund, which they are legally entitled to.

They might have to wait a week or so to call in to get it arranged. If Southwest balks at giving the refund, they should contest the charge via their credit card, due to non-provision of service, and also complain to DOT. No matter what Southwest says their policy is.

Once JetBlue not only cancelled on us, but simultaneously permanently cancelled service between our city and Orlando, as well as many other cities. They wouldn't give me a refund because I had changed flights once, so they said the payment was really a credit so I'd get a credit back. I contested that via my credit card successfully. Regardless of Jet Blue's policy, the credit card focused on the fact that I had paid for a service (the flights), which they did not provide.

 

[hopemax]

We got caught up this today after our 12/22 flight got canceled. We were traveling DEN -> SEA. I am SO glad we always book non-stop and we kept up on all the reporting, so we didn't check bags. As disappointing as today was, we are only out some sleep and the 11 hours between when we left home and got back home. And I guess the $8 for parking and tip for the airport van driver who drove us back to the lot instead of making us wait for the shuttle bus.

Our plan is to just sit tight for a couple days, and when the phones start operating again, if we haven't been automatically refunded including the Early Bird we purchased for our return flight (our outbound did get refunded after the12/22 cancellation and we didn't rebuy it) already... and not travel vouchers... DH will be on the phone.

 

[clm10308]

We were originally supposed to leave Orlando Creistmas Eve. We rebooked for tonight. Then our rebooked flight got canceled. Now we are booked on a flight on Friday. That was the first flight available for 4.

 

[Ross Kratter]

I've been on hold for nearly 4 ½ hours trying to get rebooked for my flight home (to Orlando) that was scheduled for tomorrow. There's nothing available until Saturday online; I have to be at work on Thursday.

 

[sam_gordon]

Isn't it Southwest that doesn't follow the "hub and spoke" model of most major airlines? I wonder if that's what causes their major disruptions when weather affects flights. Sure, other airlines have weather cancel flights, but from what I read in USA Today, Southwest accounted for nearly 75% of all canceled domestic flights yesterday (source). I doubt they're operating 3/4 of all flights.

 

[hopemax]

From reading a lot of stuff yesterday, they had a significant failure of their crew deployment system. Apparently, flight crews and pilots call a number to get their daily flight assignments and a lot of people ready and able to work, couldn’t do that yesterday. Their linear model vs. hub & spoke relies on quick turnover and so things snowballed quickly given the other issues of tight staffing (true in good/normal conditions), let alone people out with illness, burnout and now this.

The weather problems from earlier, certainly set the board unfavorably, but yesterday was operational failures due to a fragile and outdated technical system combined with insufficient staff for their flight schedule. They lost all their wiggle room in the system for staffing, due to post-pandemic realities but tried to plow ahead anyway. So IMO, this was a predictable outcome. When you need most things to go right for the situation to keep the balls or planes in the air, and the situation is multiple sub-failures, the overall system is going to melt down.

 

[FCDub]

Really sorry for anyone caught in this mess.

 

[Micca]

I think Southwest will do refunds, but I'd wait a while until they can get their system up & running. This isn't something that's going to get corrected in the next day or two, maybe next week? I hate to see all these people stranded in airports around the U.S. and hope they can figure out a way to get to their destination. If I were the SWA CEO, I'd be calling Bob Chapek for exit interview advice.

 

[jrsharp21]

Has anyone tried to cancel their reservations willingly but not able to do so? I am flying out to WDW for Marathon Weekend next week. We originally were booked on SW, but decided to avoid them right now and booked tickets on United. Now I am trying to cancel our tickets online and the website keeps popping up errors when trying to cancel. Tried to call the main customer service number and its not even operable.

 

[StarCruzer]

For those interested in more detail on what's happening with Southwest, and employee shared info on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SouthwestAirlines/comments/zw32yt

Customer service is going to be absolutely buried with calls. I know it's awful but please remember it's not the fault of rank and file SW employees. Execs made the decision to not spend $$ to update their flight crew planning software and it blew up in their faces.

 

[sam_gordon]

From reading a lot of stuff yesterday, they had a significant failure of their crew deployment system. Apparently, flight crews and pilots call a number to get their daily flight assignments and a lot of people ready and able to work, couldn’t do that yesterday. Their linear model vs. hub & spoke relies on quick turnover and so things snowballed quickly given the other issues of tight staffing (true in good/normal conditions), let alone people out with illness, burnout and now this.

The weather problems from earlier, certainly set the board unfavorably, but yesterday was operational failures due to a fragile and outdated technical system combined with insufficient staff for their flight schedule. They lost all their wiggle room in the system for staffing, due to post-pandemic realities but tried to plow ahead anyway. So IMO, this was a predictable outcome. When you need most things to go right for the situation to keep the balls or planes in the air, and the situation is multiple sub-failures, the overall system is going to melt down.

Thanks for the info. Didn't SW have massive issues earlier this year with their computer system (or something like that)? If they don't upgrade soon, they're going to go the way of Eastern Airlines. Two major issues in a year should be enough to give travelers pause.

 

[Christine]

Has anyone tried to cancel their reservations willingly but not able to do so? I am flying out to WDW for Marathon Weekend next week. We originally were booked on SW, but decided to avoid them right now and booked tickets on United. Now I am trying to cancel our tickets online and the website keeps popping up errors when trying to cancel. Tried to call the main customer service number and its not even operable.

I think they are just "Locked Down" for like 3 days. No one can really do anything with anything for the next 3 days (or so I'm hearing unofficially).

 

[Herding_Cats]

For those interested in more detail on what's happening with Southwest, and employee shared info on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SouthwestAirlines/comments/zw32yt

Customer service is going to be absolutely buried with calls. I know it's awful but please remember it's not the fault of rank and file SW employees. Execs made the decision to not spend $$ to update their flight crew planning software and it blew up in their faces.

Looks like whoever posted it has gone back and deleted it already.

 

[DaviVascaino]

I am flying SW in Feb 2023, hopefully it is sorted it out.

 

[hopemax]

Thanks for the info. Didn't SW have massive issues earlier this year with their computer system (or something like that)? If they don't upgrade soon, they're going to go the way of Eastern Airlines. Two major issues in a year should be enough to give travelers pause.

They have had multiple. There was a meltdown in June 2021 that made big news too. Southwest blamed it on a third party's weather system that wasn't able to get accurate weather downloaded into the flight computer system. Aviation reporter Jon Ostrower, reposted his analysis of another system failure from October 2021 that in some press was framed as a labor issue related to Covid vax rules, and his conclusion that it was related to pilot shortages, especially "fatigue pulls" ie pilots who are too tired to safely fly. I think the earlier incident this year was a traffic control outage, that affected all airlines, but like with this week's weather the other airlines recovered and Southwest couldn't. In April, they had to contract their summer schedule. The new CEO started in February 2022 and at that time said one of his agendas was upgrading the technological systems and solving the pilot shortage because they knew they were insufficient.

As this is a Disney site, there has been many a discussion of Disney's staffing issues combined with not keeping up with capacity as their attendance grew, combined with poor ride operability and how they have contributed to Disney's operational meltdowns on a given day. And general talk about supply chain failures everywhere. So I'm not sure how unique Southwest's struggles really are in the grand scheme of things. And not just the inevitability of years of inadequate investment in technological and labor stability that reached it's breaking point under high enough stress. This is certainly a high profile failure, but I'm sure there are smaller ones happening in other industries that most people aren't aware of. I am concerned that there are many, many chickens coming home to roost and it's going to be very expensive to get things back on track. As consumers and customers, we need to honest about the potential and realize these incidents might become more frequent in the short term, and account for them in our budgets and planning.

 

[gorjus121]

Has anyone tried to cancel their reservations willingly but not able to do so? I am flying out to WDW for Marathon Weekend next week. We originally were booked on SW, but decided to avoid them right now and booked tickets on United. Now I am trying to cancel our tickets online and the website keeps popping up errors when trying to cancel. Tried to call the main customer service number and its not even operable.

Since our in-laws were meeting us in Orlando on Monday, but our flight was canceled we were easily able to rebook by "changing" their uncanceled flights online for April. It even allowed a choice for refund or credit of the fare difference.