Quote:
Originally Posted by NoMo50
Southwest Airlines has cancelled about 3,000 flights during the post-Christmas travel rush. This included a Thursday flight family members were on leaving out of Orlando. A check of the SWA website showed ZERO flights leaving Orlando until Saturday, December 31st. Of all airline cancellations, Southwest is accounting for nearly 75% of the total.
Calls to Southwest "customer service" number were met with either busy signals, or immediate disconnection. We could not even get the privilege of being placed on hold for hours. Fortunately, we were able to book our family members on an American Airlines flight before the inevitable price gouging kicked in. The same flight we booked our kids on 3 hours ago is now showing fares SIX TIMES what we booked for.
Southwest has made press comments with a wide variety of excuses for these mass cancellations. However, I have not seen "bad management" mentioned a single time by the airline. I feel bad for the thousands of travelers stuck around the country who are trying to get home. Southwest Airlines truly is the Grinch who stole Christmas.
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While management of communications is a big problem they need to fix, I have heard "reasons" rather than "excuses."
Logistics is a huge deal.
In order for planes to leave out of Orlando, there has to be planes IN Orlando. Those planes were coming from the north - where airports have been shut down. No planes = no flights out. Some planes went out of Orlando, but some were supposed to go to airports that were shut down due to the "climate change that doesn't exist" - not existing again in the north. So those planes couldn't leave Orlando.
You have planes NOT coming from shut-down airports, and planes NOT going to shut-down airports, and you have an entire airline that is blocked from travel.