![]() ![]() The air travel industry is just now recovering from the pandemic, which reduced activity to levels not seen since the beginning of the jet age. "It's so cliché to say it's the perfect storm, but it's the perfect storm." “There’s just no way almost to apologize enough because we love our customers, we love our people and we really impacted their plans.”Įxecutives with the airline said this week that it may be as much as a week to connect all Southwest passengers with their destinations. And I’m extremely sorry for that,” Jordan said. “This has impacted so many people, so many customers, over the holidays. Southwest’s Robert Jordan said in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday that after safety, there is no greater focus than reimbursing customers and getting them reunited with their luggage. Southwest began accepting reservations again Friday after getting crews and planes into place, and executives have started on what is undoubtedly a long road to regaining the trust of travelers. It was a stark contrast near Southwest Airlines counters, where hundreds of people sat on bags or slept where they could, with the Southwest aircraft sitting on the tarmac yards away, but crewless. ![]() “Other airlines that experienced weather-related cancellations and delays due to the winter storm recovered relatively quickly, unlike Southwest.”Īt airports across the country, passengers had what could be described as a typical holiday week for travel. “While weather can disrupt flight schedules, the thousands of cancellations by Southwest in recent days have not been because of the weather,” Buttigieg wrote. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a letter to Southwest CEO Robert Jordan late Thursday called the week of disruptions “unacceptable.” “It’s just the inconvenience of four days with not being able to get home,” she said. Kraus is a frequent flyer and has grown frustrated with Southwest. “I paid my daughter’s roommate $100 to stay in her room and had my medication FedEx-ed to me,” Kraus said. Kraus left late last week just before the storm to see her children for Christmas and was supposed to return Tuesday. “I’m still reeling from the experience,” said Theresa Kraus, arriving home Friday in Dallas after being stuck for four days in Washington, D.C. Yet if even one leg of a flight was scheduled with Southwest this week, there were very different emotions. “They were super friendly everywhere and not a problem.” “My husband kept checking it (the flight schedule) through the night and early this morning and everything went accordingly,” Rosaria said. They had no trouble Friday flying from Buffalo through Chicago to see their daughter and enjoy some warmer weather in Dallas for New Year’s. John and Rosaria Monte had been watching their Southwest flights closely this week as the airline struggled and their home city of Buffalo, New York, dug out for a deadly blizzard. "So maybe if something goes wrong, we'll be able to figure it out.or we'll just drive!" "We were 4 hours early," Colton Altier said as he checked in for a regularly scheduled Southwest flight home to Southern California. ![]() On Friday, however, Southwest passengers reported relatively empty flights, some with one person to a row, as the carrier reshuffled routes and sent planes, and crews, to where they needed to be. "I learned those terms this week."įederal regulators have vowed a rigorous review of what happened at Southwest, with all eyes on outdated crew-scheduling technology that left flight crews out of place after the storm hit, essentially shutting down almost all of the carrier’s operations. "I've learned a lot about how Southwest works, point-to-point versus hub and spoke," Keely Spikes said after returning on a rebooked Southwest flight to Dallas from San Diego. "It feels like your vacation is over, but it's not because you're still there," Eric Ricci, who returned to Dallas from San Diego on Friday said. While that was still more than United, American and Delta combined, its progress following one of the most chaotic weeks in aviation history for a single airline. The Dallas carrier, which had canceled thousands of flights every day this week after a winter storm last weekend, reported less than 40 cancellations early Friday. Southwest Airlines returned to a relatively normal flight schedule Friday, as the focus shifts to making things right with what could be well more than a million passengers who missed family connections or flights home during the holidays, and many of whom are still missing luggage. ![]()
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