Southwest Fans... are you reconsidering

[jkelly86]

This is our exact situation. We fly direct with SW from either Nashville or St Louis. No other airlines offer direct to the places we fly regularly. We hate non-direct flights and avoid them as much as we can.

Allegiant flies nonstop BNA to Sanford/Orlando (5 days per week), just in case you need a backup.

 

[bakerworld]

Currently, I am more willing to book elsewhere but ONLY because SW has eliminated 90% of the NS flights out of PHL. If SW was still flying NS out of PHL all week long they would still be my 'go to' travel partner. We've had some super SW bad experiences. At one point, for us, SW went from always on time to always delayed - majorly. However I prefer their boarding, seating and straightforward pricing.

 

[AussieFan8]

Count us among those affected by the recent Southwest chaos. Our flight home from Orlando was delayed for four hours on 12/23, then canceled. Rescheduled flight on 12/24 was delayed four hours, then we were told we could board, then it was canceled. Rescheduled flight on 12/26 was only one of a couple that successfully made it to my hometown that day. It was very stressful and I was very upset to miss Christmas at home, but there are many ways it could have been worse (ie I was very grateful we had not checked luggage, we were able to find a hotel room, etc.). While we were in the midst of all of it, I said I didn't want to fly again for a long time, especially on Southwest. However, they are the only nonstop to Orlando for us besides Frontier and Allegiant. We have been loyal Southwest customers for decades and have quite a few points as well as vouchers from our recent experience. The gate agents, flight attendants, and pilots were all wonderful through the chaos, and we made sure to thank them. So I'm not sure how I feel about Southwest moving forward, but I suspect we'll try them again and hope for the best. If this happened a second time, that would probably change my plans moving forward. I would feel much better about flying them again if they updated their IT/crew tracking system.

 

[kristenrice]

I don't fly too often (once a year, at most), but because I have the SW Visa card, I earn up enough points to cover my flight(s). That makes it awfully hard to choose another airline when I can fly for "free" on SW. Our airport is ridiculously expensive ($500+ with no non-stop legacy carrier options to MCO) and even SW has crummy itineraries out of our airport during the times that I tend to travel (fall). I think that this latest development was a huge eye-opener for their upper-level management and I hope that they will learn from it and fix it. I think that their front-line employees have always provided top-notch customer service and I think that as long as they get their infrastructure fixed, they can set themselves back up as a "go-to" airline again. Time will tell....They are definitely in a "do or die" situation and their executives have some critical decisions to make going forward.

 

[Wiltony]

Did anyone get an e-mail today awarding southwest rapid rewards points as a "gesture of goodwill?"


I'm curious how much was awarded and how they determined how much to award. Would you be willing to answer the following questions? (My answers follow)


How many points did you get? (25,000)
How many codes did you receive? (1)
How many reservations did you have that were impacted? (1 one-way flight)
How many people were on your reservation? (6)
What was the nature of your disruption? (we only had a short delay)

 

[Tiggerette]

Yes. I also submitted a policy question via the webpage email functionality.
How many points did you get? (25,000)
How many codes did you receive? (1)
How many reservations did you have that were impacted? (1) (Roundtrip, 2 non-stop flights)
How many people were on your reservation? (1)
What was the nature of your disruption? (completely cancelled after third attempt to fly)

 

[paults]

I will look elsewhere because SW from Philly removed their non-stops during the week. They only have them on SAT ans Sun at bad times.

 

[disneygeek401]

SWA chaos almost affected us. Flew PHL-MCO on 12/23, day before cruise. Plane came from MDW and was delayed 2.5 hours as MDW had lots of snow and real feel temps in the negative 20s and 30s. Many in the gate area were quite unsure the flight would actually happen, but miraculously, it did. It seems like infrastructure is lacking at SWA, and software/tech badly needs an upgrade as it is always being cited for any operational meltdown there. Things like free bags are nice but I would def consider other carriers in the future. IMO some aspects of the soft product have gone downhill. Only carriers I would not consider are the ULCCs.

 

[disneygeek401]

Currently, I am more willing to book elsewhere but ONLY because SW has eliminated 90% of the NS flights out of PHL. If SW was still flying NS out of PHL all week long they would still be my 'go to' travel partner. We've had some super SW bad experiences. At one point, for us, SW went from always on time to always delayed - majorly. However I prefer their boarding, seating and straightforward pricing.

Yeah, in August for a WDW trip they had ZERO nonstop flights coming back...they only offered them on Saturdays. Was annoying having to connect.

 

[justafigment27]

To be perfectly honest, I pretty much only use SWA to fly non-stop to MCO when I can fly on points. There just aren’t great SWA options from Michigan to places I want to visit. If I’m paying cash, can’t get a non-stop with SWA or am flying somewhere besides MCO, it’s usually more cost effective (and less time consuming) to book on Delta out of Detroit.

We flew to New Orleans on SWA this summer with a layover at Midway and it just wasn’t pleasant. We did it because it was free because I had a bunch of points. The flight out departed at 0630 (which meant we were up way too early) and was uneventful - we were just way too tired and had no hotel to check into so early when we arrived in NOLA. The flight home was awful … our connection at MDW got delayed by several hours and we didn’t get home to our house until 4:00am! The “free day” at home before we needed to head back to work was not productive - we slept and walked around like zombies all day.

We have a cruise booked for May and I have SWA booked because it was free (we had a big trip requiring a lot of points booked for spring 2020 and it got cancelled). The flight down is non-stop, but because of the timing of the cruise, I had to book a flight with a connection on the way home. After our Christmas fiasco (posted elsewhere - spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at MCO before flying home on Frontier and still don’t have luggage ten days later), I decided to cancel the SWA flights for our cruise and book with Delta. I just don’t trust SWA to get me to my destination for something as time sensitive as a cruise and I have zero faith that our connection on the way home will be seamless. The Delta flights are $416/person … they are reasonable times and Delta codeshares and has a ton of flights heading into/out of Detroit every day, so if there is a problem, I feel like we have a better chance of getting where we need to be.

I may fly SWA again, but it’s too soon for me to even consider it at this point. It’s a major hassle when your flights get cancelled or delayed on SWA - they don’t codeshare, so you either wait for a crappy rebook on SWA or fork over cash for another airline. It’s the same with Spirit and Frontier (both of which I have flown before without issue … but I would never book either one to fly to a cruise port because you’re SOL if they cancel your flight - even booking a day ahead isn’t enough if they cancel - it can be days before they can get you out on a new flight).

 

[bakerworld]

DH refuses to fly on connecting flights. The last SW connecting flight we flew was in 2011. We were stuck in Florida, sleeping on the floor of our eldest and I really wanted to go home. SW cancelled one flight after another due to weather and I was in tears. It wasn't the fault of SW because the weather was horrible. We were successful in getting home via a connector thru Jacksonville that the SW employee couldn't guarantee would take off because PHL was closing. That evening as we were sitting in our warm home, buried under a foot of ice laden snow and grateful to be home, there was a loud boom. A tree in our back yard split in half, falling on our electric wires which ripped off the back corner of our roof. Luckily we didn't lose power but we did have a sizable hole in the roof. I can't even imagine if we'd've continued to be stuck in Florida and having to come home to that situation.

 

[Keeblerelf928]

As others have said, SW has removed almost all non stops out of philly to MCO and I will only do non stops for short flights. I spent down the last of the points and am retiring my SW credit card for a different travel card. I loved SW and flew with them exclusively for 10+ years but the routes suck now from PHL and it looks like getting to and from where you want to go is now iffy.

 

[RoseGold]

I'm still confused by the explanation. It was just the computers and the planning? Crazy.

 

[EACarlson]

I'm still confused by the explanation. It was just the computers and the planning? Crazy.

The 30 year old computers crashed when asked to make too many changes in too short of a time period. The widespread weather issues introduced too many changes to the schedule of both people and equipment that the computer system couldn't handle. This caused the computers to not now who or what planes were where, every time they would try to bring it back up with partial information it would collapse again. When they cancelled essentially everything for three days they were able to manually find where everyone and everything was and could start building back a schedule. Without a very large investment in their technology infrastructure, this will happen again the next time there is a large scale winter storm that affects DEN, MDW, DAL, BNA and BWI.

 

[1420Elexismc]

We've never had any issues with Southwest, and I will continue to use them.

Unfortunately, I also don't have a lot of non stop choices from BDL in CT, Spirit and JetBlue nickel and dime you to death on bags (both checked and carryon), and I have friends who haven't had really good luck with either.

Same here-flying out of BDL...we stick with Southwest for the price and checked bags. We have never had an issue. I've flown Southwest, Delta, and JetBlue. Southwest has been perfectly fine for us.

 

[sam_gordon]

The 30 year old computers crashed when asked to make too many changes in too short of a time period. The widespread weather issues introduced too many changes to the schedule of both people and equipment that the computer system couldn't handle. This caused the computers to not now who or what planes were where, every time they would try to bring it back up with partial information it would collapse again. When they cancelled essentially everything for three days they were able to manually find where everyone and everything was and could start building back a schedule. Without a very large investment in their technology infrastructure, this will happen again the next time there is a large scale winter storm that affects DEN, MDW, DAL, BNA and BWI.

Each time this happens, SW will lose more and more customers. They had a bunch in June(?), causing my sister's family to decide to drive to Florida from Indianapolis because their flight was cancelled late.

 

[Pyxie]

The recent issues may have me more wary, but they won't keep me from using Southwest *if* the right price comes along. I used to be 100% loyal, but money also talks and recently, their prices have not been what they were in the past. If they decide to offer some sort of sale to bring people back or boost PR, I'll be booking them right away.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I'm still confused by the explanation. It was just the computers and the planning? Crazy.

I take it you have never been to the DMV when the entire state's system crashes? (rhetorical, just giving my example )

Any given company or entity's system can crash. Major airlines here have had system crashes too, planned maintenance at the worst of times, etc. For SWA their issue is an aging infrastructure that they had not opted to continuously update. No airline is going to have a perfect record over the course of their lifespan unfortunately SWA has control over their tech in terms of choosing to work on it but they haven't.

Just to give an annoying point for me. Our flight on British Airways from Athens to Heathrow at the end of July 2023 was cancelled a few days ago...nearly 8 months in advance. Luckily we had not paid for seats but I'll be pissed as heck if our Heathrow to Chicago flight is given how much money we paid to select our seats (which is one reason why I like SWA). I can only guess that they merged flights. Ours was a mid-morning around 10:20am and they moved us to an 8:10am flight. It means we won't have any time for breakfast at the hotel and will need to wake up at 3 maybe 4 am..not ideal at all. And this is again for travel nearly 8 months in advance.

 

[disney-inspired]

I used to be SW fan but haven't flown with them in many years because:

• They never have direct flights to anywhere I want to go (I'm in CA)
• The costs is usually more than other airlines and the two free bags don't sway me because if I have a checked bag it's only one and I'll gladly pay the $50 RT fee for the luggage to get a cheaper, direct flight.
• I like having an assigned seat

 

[EACarlson]

Each time this happens, SW will lose more and more customers.

The big question right now is, how many of those that were caught up in this will actually stay away? Right now there are a whole lot of people saying they will never fly SW again. 25,000 RR points will sway some of them back, others will come back when SW is either the only non-stop option or significantly less expensive. I've got SW tickets MKE-MCO in two weeks. It was 17,000 RR points for my round trip non-stop in each direction, in the midst of all of this I booked a backup on Delta, 34,000 SM with a connection in the northern part of the country each direction. I've also got 4 business trips in the next 7 months, at least two of them the company is going to put me on SW, probably all 4. Travelling from MKE to BNA, MCI, LIT and LAS.