comment: >
  
  Read what the pilots and other employees are saying about this. Pretty much all of them agree this is the fault of the CEO and COO who took over in 2004 and were there up until recently. They were both numbers only guys. Their operating system was from the 90s for crying out loud. 
  Pilots were saying that they were literally waiting at the gates with the passengers but couldn't leave because Southwests computer system wouldn't assign them
context: I was affected by SW.  Never made it to my final destination.  Flight was canceled twice and never received a rebook.  At that point, I bought a ticket with another airline to return to the original location.  Don't know when I will receive my luggage. >
  
  I travel a significant amount for work, like almost every week and I would always fly southwest. At the start of 22’ we expanded my teams operational area to quite a few places southwest didn’t fly to, so I switched to American. I really thought I’d miss southwest but genuinely haven’t looked back. While sometimes they have cheaper fares-you lose a lot in exchange for it. >
  
  Yeah. I always flew United or Delta, sometimes JetBlue. They got them TV's in the back of the seat. >
  
  Delta was great, live tv, usb ports, and games all built into the seats is great! >
  
  Yeah I’ve always needed to connect thru ATL (due to where I live) so I often fly Delta; I use their Amex card for the points. I genuinely don’t understand all the hate that company gets. Like, air travel sorta blows regardless of which airline you fly… but their app is great, their employees are unfailingly chipper at ass o’clock in the morning, and one time I arrived way early for a connection and I just walked up to the gate agent for an earlier flight and I was like, “uh is there room on this plane?” And the gate agent was like “I gotchu fam” and changed me to that flight on the spot, didn’t send me back to the line at the main customer service desk. Never lost a bag, never bumped me, and definitely never stranded me overnight. And, as you say, the lil TVs!!! >
  
  And customer service like that will have you not blink an eye if it’s a little more. Loved to hear the good experience, we don’t get to fly delta enough but experience is always good. >
  
  Yup the older I get, the more I’m willing to pay to avoid hassle. Let those whippersnappers take the red eye in those horrible Frontier seats! Mama wants a free checked bag and comfort plus!!! >
  
  I have a Sothwest flight on Saturday... yikes >
  
  Dude me too. Southwest was the untouchable airline in America until… I still don’t know wtf happened?  A software glitch?  Sql query gone wrong?   Wtf. >
  
  Southwest had two things going for it - first they had one type of aircraft (Boeing 737s), which kept maintenance costs down by not having to stock a dozen different model parts. 
  Second, and most importantly, they had VERY well done fuel options that allowed them to have significantly lower fuel costs than the others.  However, those contracts expired so they are now buying fuel at the same rate as the other airlines.
  If you compare flights now they are basically the same cost as the other airlines, depending on where you originate.   However, their cattle car boarding policy (and other low cost tendencies) kind of turned people off, especially now that the savings were not there.
  Same cost, more hassle. >
  
  I actually prefer their boarding system to any other airline. There is no anxiety of if you will get on early enough to get an overhead spot. You can tell by your position. Also, it seems like there are fewer people trying to get overhead space because it’s free to check bags. Combine that with the ability to cancel flights for credit and it’s my favorite airline. >
  
  You wouldn’t happen to be an occasional traveler who doesn’t do much international or work travel? >
  
  I travel monthly for work and fly internationally several times a year.  With other airlines if you don’t have status then you have to worry. >
  
  Blown away. The lack of complementary upgrades, meaningful international program, destinations, etc. make it a cattle car experience for me. I usually fly United and funnel points from chase into southwest when UA flights are too expensive. 🤷🏽‍♂️ >
  
  I used to regularly fly internationally for work, had gold status on Singapore, which at the time put me in the United  and Lufthansa gold status as well.
  I would routinely use my points to upgrade in all three for business.
  Coach, on either of those two airlines was better than business on United for international travel.  
  I got cut off after two beers in two hours on a 10 hr flight with United.  They suck. >
  
  Flying is all about choosing the least worst airline. >
  
  I wish they'd be as good domestic as international. If you ever flew Qantas or Qatar Airlines or Emirates...holy shit 
  IMO JEt Blue is pretty solid domestically. I don't mind watching TV in the air. >
  
  I used to fly jetblue pretty much every time I flew for quite a while. They were great until they weren't. I'd never had canceled or even many delayed flights with them, but suddenly every flight I was on with them was delayed or canceled. Then I'd get rerouted to all kinds of places way outta the way to make my destination, and it happened over and over with them. The last straw was them losing my luggage for not only the duration of my trip, but well after I got back to Boston. They gave me some vouchers for a free flight, and when I used them, that flight got delayed over and over again and eventually canceled. So I use Delta now, and i havent had many issues. Probably helps that I fly to Atlanta a lot though, cuz that's where they're based. >
  
  Delta and United are pretty solid. Growing up we almost always flew United. These days it's largely Jet Blue or United or Delta. Don't think I've ever flown southwest >
  
  They blame a technology gap. They did billions in stock buybacks over the past decade. Maybe they should have invested in the fucking company instead of giving investors a quick pay out. >
  
  They obviously should have invested in technology, but stock buybacks aren’t done to pay out investors. It’s like sticking cash in a savings account. 
  Next time they need to raise capital, they can do a share issuance without further dilution. >
  
  Lol using stock buybacks as a savings account is the stupidest possible way to deal with having capital available for a rainy day >
  
  Except in most cases if you have an emergency and you need capital fast, you are probably trying to do it at a lower share price than you did the buy back at >
  
  points at Southwests current situation, the topic of this conversation >
  
  That lady’s face says it all >
  
  Southwest Airlines, especially with its current corporate leadership is nothing like the airline that it was originally known as back in the 1980's and 1990's when the planes were brown.
  They are sabotaging what little is left of their corporate image as fast as possible. >
  
  I have a flight with them in 2 weeks. Hopefully it will.go OK. But either way, it's my last one with them for the foreseeable future. >
  
  You might want to check out the post from an swa employee stating the current issues will take a long time to sort out. I’d make alternate arrangements if I were you. >
  
  what post? >
  
  r/southwestairlines has a lot of stories on this fiasco from insiders. >
  
  
  CEO Robert Jordan said "...but clearly we need to double down” on upgrading systems to avoid a repeat of this week."
  The Dallas airline was undone by a combination of factors [that] helped cause a similar failure by Southwest in October 2021.
  
  a bit of too little too late but still...profits were made >
  
  ... A year ago the same shit happened. 
  "We need to fix it"
  Obviously they dont. >
  
  We needed to fix this last year.  We still need to but we needed to also. >
  
  Software procurement and rollout is a multi year process for most airlines in the best of conditions.
  Just down the street from Southwest, American is trying to replace parts of their backend and software suites. They’re about 5-6 years into rolling out their new flight planning software, which has been plagued by setbacks. It was supposed to be done by late 2020, but likely won’t see full adoption until late 2023/early 2024. >
  
  Adding to this, in the software industry the airlines and the government are used as poster children for legacy (old) software. It's a combination of (1) it being expensive to replace, (2) extremely low fault/vulnerability tolerance, and (3) decades of poor codebase maintenance leading to a nightmare of spaghetti code.
  Not that the airlines are faultless - they can and should have started on modernizing ages ago - but I wouldn't expect to see meaningful updates any time soon if Southwest's just now starting to fix this. >
  
  Most of the major airlines have been modernizing in the cloud for years now, it’s just a very lengthy process. >
  
  I just drove 6 hours with my wife from Little Rock, AR to Dallas, TX because of a canceled flight so I could get my next leg to LAX. 
  Hot damn I’m tired. >
  
  We did SoCal to NorCal on Christmas after waiting at the airport five hours. Luckily we didn’t check our bags. I still don’t know the status of our refund, since I can’t get past the busy signal when I call. The whole airport was a complete shit show. I feel lucky we had the option to rent a car and drive. >
  
  I also did that drive a few days after Christmas. It took way longer than normal due to bad weather and holiday traffic. It was miserable. I couldn’t get a rental car because of high demand so I had to have a family member to drive me.
  I don’t have any hotels or rental car charges to have them refund, but just getting my flight refunded doesn’t really capture the full cost of the stress and missed time with my family, nor the inconvenience to the person who had to drive me. >
  
  One of my favorite analogies...you have the right to complain about bad luck getting struck by lightning - UNLESS you make it a habit to fly kites during thunderstorms. >
  
  I stopped flying southwest years ago because they were so horrible.  I primarily fly delta or Alaska as a second choice these days. >
  
  Interesting to see how they change and recover from this. Going to take a major leadership effort. >
  
  Or they slide from their unique-ish mid-tier air carrier to discount carrier status, and just join the race to the bottom. >
  
  I thought they were already a discount airline. With their prices and free bag policy they’re usually cheaper even compared to airlines like spirit (unless you travel with no bags). >
  
  Ya, when they entered the field, they were discount, at least for the US markets, but they aren't cut-rate discount like Spirit/Frontier/RyanAir. Southwest was in a weird spot where they were better than what is now considered discount and significantly cheaper than the legacy airlines (Delta/American/United/etc), but with an evaluation that they are as good if not better experience than the legacy airlines. >
  
  I feel like that was true 10 years ago, but the last 4-5 flights I've had with Southwest have been noticeably worse than Delta or United. Bad enough that I probably won't bother saving the $50-$100 on basic flights. I have a Southwest flight in two weeks, and whether it goes through or not, I'm basically done with them. They have a deep hole to dig out of to regain consumer confidence. >
  
  Until corporations understand that shareholders aren't their customers, this will never end. Every corporation in America is colluding to make layoffs and shitty customer service the norm. Had they hired people and equipment instead of buying back stock with their taxpayer bailouts, this wouldn't have happened. >
  
  our capitalist society choices led to the stock market. nearly as bad as the federal reserve system. the loops created are not indefinitely sustainable, especially when the consumer makes their voice heard. >
  
  What happens when the consumer also owns stock? >
  
  Institutions own 76% of the stock >
  
  What is considered an "institution" though?
  If it's someone like Fidelity or Vanguard, most people have retirement accounts set up with target funds with these 2 companies. So yes, if that's the case, an "institution" owns it, but in reality, they are just purchasing it as a middle-man for the end-user in a mutual fund. >
  
  I like this train of thought.   
  If you store your money with any middle man ( Bank ) your directly responsible for the decision that middle man makes using your money. >
  
  If you have a 401k or IRA with Fidelity or Vanguard, you choose which of their mutual funds or ETFs to invest in. They list out all orgs they have shares in so you know what you’re buying. >
  
  "Low cost" airlines, and SW is a low cost airline like Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant, etc despite how they have marketed themselves over the past 10 years or so, stay "low cost" by doing things a certain way. We now seeing very clearly how SW was keeping their costs low relative to other options. >
  
  Robert and the rest of the Executive staff need to get their asses answering phone calls and throwing baggage >
  
  This seems to be a good time to cancel my southwest card. I really don’t trust this airline. No need to give them my money >
  
  Argh and i just got sw companion pass status like a month ago 
  Wife and i were planning to jet set all over for the price one next year. >
  
  Was so close myself to getting one! >
  
  This is beyond pathetic. This is what happens when shareholder value is combined with complete insulation from actual accountability.  I bet Mr. Jordan will still get a hefty bonus for 22 >
  
  There is a great post on /r/SouthwestAirlines from a pilot that made it clear it was the prior CEO, Gary Kelly, that had ignored the problem since 2004 and the new guy has plans to address it, but it blew up before they could get going. >
  
  Thx - that confirms my suspicion. US Airlines in general run a great racket realizing fantastic profits by packing planes full and eliminate any buffers. Whenever shit happens its the customer that gets the shaft by getting detained on the plane or airport for hour or even days. The only reason that works is that its next to impossible to hold airlines responsible and not a lot of actual competition. >
  
  You do know the airline industry is very unprofitable right? Looking at Southwest’s latest earnings report they lost 300 million dollars. >
  
  This doesn’t surprise me one bit. Management of companies have always seen IT as a cost, not an investment. >
  
  Are we seeing the end of Southwest as a company?  It feels like it wouldn’t take much for them to implode >
  
  Ugh. I have so many miles saved up with them…. >
  
  I am dumping my southwest rewards credit card which I currently use to pay all my bills and normal spending for a generic travel rewards card.
  Thankfully southwest changed their policy so points never expire and the new card let's you transfer points to southwest so I won't fully lose the points I earned.
  Up until this point I liked southwest, I could fly my whole family on vacation for free every other year. >
  
  The can always change their policy again. Having significant “money” saved as airline or credit card points is never a good idea IMO. They’re basically monopoly dollars that a private company can change the value of at any time. >
  
  I am liking something more generic that you could use for a variety of airlines or hotels.
  Travel still seems to be a better value than a cash back card.
  Use it for all your regular bills and spending and pay the bill in full every month so there is no interest. >
  
  "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport". Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk. And the architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.
  They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of the Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not" >
  
  dave barry? >
  
  Douglas Adams >
  
  This situation continues to go downhill. >
  
  Shouldn’t the headline be “snowball continues to cancel Southwest Airlines flights”? >
  
  I went through a nightmare of a large Southwest cancellations during the August floodings, and it cost me $1200 to put up my family in last minute accommodations for days awaiting for the new flight ~ all while Southwest held on to our luggage.  Uber & DoorDash got us necessary medicines and toiletries, as well as food and clothing.   Just a mess!!! >
  
  
  got us necessary medicines
  
  Those should never, ever be in your checked luggage. >
  
  Not prescriptions, but OTC stuff that we didn’t pack extra of because we didn’t expect our vacation to be extended by several days. >
  
  Can't people sue sw for damages for canceled flights at some point? >
  
  If you want rights like that you need to live in Europe >
  
  For the record, Southwest got 8 billion dollars in government subsidies >
  
  Anyone who works as a vendor for WN knows that "technology gap" had nothing to do with this, we've thrown customer management solutions at them before and they refuse to spend money on that stuff >
  
  The fact that they have to threaten them with government action to try and get them to refund people is insane. You literally took money for a service then failed to provide that service. Everyone else would have to issue a refund, but no you just want to issue credits for a future flight. Screw that. >
  
  My family of 4 and sisters family of 3 were all booked on the same flight.  Direct flight from Louisville to Tampa on Tues the 27th to visit our parents for a week.  It was going to be our Christmas with them.  My mom had been preparing for weeks.  Just getting a refund is not enough.  This killed peoples vacations, family time,  time they won’t get back.  The penalty should be a multiple of the the refund cost.  2-5x as punishment. >
  
  My grandmother passed away while I was sitting in the airport waiting for them to figure out where the crew was for my flight. >
  
  I am sorry for your loss. >
  
  My SW flight on the 3rd is looking in doubt >
  
  ….then how does mine this Friday look?? >
  
  I booked a refundable flight for Saturday in case my Friday flight is cancelled. Check the Southweairlines sub, if it’s cancelled they’ll reimburse for alternate transport >
  
  This is all Gary Kellys fault. >
  
  I think it's R Kelly's fault >
  
  You might even call it a blizzard of cancellations. >
  
  Southwest isn’t worth the headache >
  
  I’m getting on an American flight today. Thankfully with just a carry on >
  
  Ya but the CEO is really sorry so let’s just move on people