The ongoing misery for Southwest Airlines customers continues Wednesday, with over 100 flights scrubbed by the airline at Orlando International Airport today.
Today, Wednesday, December 28, travellers from throughout the country who are counting on Southwest Airlines to get them home from Orlando holiday trips to visit family and the theme parks, have again suffered another wave of scrubbed flights Wednesday, and it appears that there is no end in sight to the airline’s continuing meltdown in the days ahead.
By late morning Wednesday, thousands more Southwest flights have been cancelled across the country, and Southwest admit it could be next week before the flight schedule returns to normal.
Exhausted Southwest travellers stranded in Orlando for days, have been trying to find seats on other airlines, while others have decided to rent cars to get home rather than be stuck away from home for the New Year, but many unable to do either are left stranded here in Orlando, either in hotel rooms or on the floor of Orlando International Airport itself.
Even American Airlines and United Airlines have capped prices on some routes served by Southwest Airlines to make their flights more accessible to stranded Southwest passengers.
According to frustrated passengers at Orlando International Airport, Southwest are not giving vouchers for accommodations or hotels, and are not doing anything about car rentals.
While other airlines recovered from ferocious winter storms that hit large swaths of the country over the weekend, Southwest appear to be sinking, while cancellations from other major airlines are ranging from 0 to 2%, Southwest has canceled nearly 10,000 flights as of Wednesday and warned of thousands more Thursday and Friday, according to FlightAware.
In all, Southwest has canceled about 15,700 flights since winter weather began disrupting air travel on December 22.
The company blamed most cancellations on the weather and said it’s running on a reduced schedule, with many passengers are being told it could take days before they’ll be able to get on a flight.
The operational systems of Southwest have been uniquely effected, so much so that the federal government is now investigating what has happened at the Dallas based carrier, which has frustrated its own flight and ground crews as well as angry passengers.
According to Southwest Airline's own employees, the company was undone by a combination of factors including an antiquated crew-scheduling system and a network design that allows cancellations in one region to cascade throughout the country rapidly.
Those weaknesses are not new, hey helped cause a similar failure by Southwest in October 2021.
The federal government is now investigating what happened at Southwest, which carries more passengers within the United States than any other airline.
Southwest CEO Bob Jordan apologized to customers through a video on Tuesday saying "I want everyone who is dealing with the problems we’ve been facing — whether you haven’t been able to get to where you need to go or you’re one of our heroic employees caught up in a massive effort to stabilize the airline — to know, is that we’re doing everything we can to return to a normal operation, and please also hear that I’m truly sorry."
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