In Brief: $49 Fare Sale Overwhelms Southwest, Website Crashes as Customers Swarm
Jesse Tabit June 03, 2015
Southwest Airlines found its website immobilized Wednesday after advertising one-way tickets for as little as $49 as part of a three-day sale. Airline spokeswoman Brandy King blamed the site’s performance issues, which made it impossible to book a trip, on “response from customers” who were keen to take advantage of the airlines summer sale.
At the time of reporting, the issue had yet to be resolved. Southwest issued an update via Twitter Wednesday afternoon, assuring followers: “All hands are on deck to resolve site issues.”
The three-day summer sale ends Thursday. Discounted tickets are only available on select routes for travel between Aug. 24 and Dec. 16.
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I see no reason why Southwest should change the way they do their business. Except for Wednesday, I have had no trouble navigating and booking on their site - it is the easiest one to use. They may have lost sales due to the website crashing, but I doubt it will put them out of business. Very inconvenient - sure, but loyal SW customers will forgive and forget - and continue booking with them.
This would be a non-issue if it were possible to book (or even quote) elsewhere. However, after two consecutive days of errors, I booked on Allegiant. Hope it was worth it, Southwest.
Why change something that has worked for years? If it made a positive difference to their bottom line by being on Kayak, etc they would be. Calling Southwest the Greyhound of the skies is so 2000's, newer plans, WIFI, and streaming IFE, I would say SWA is far ahead United and AA on that.
It's their own fault since every other airline lets a dozen other search services like Kayak list and even sell their fares, the modern way that consumers shop and compare to see literally everything available in all configurations at one glance. But the Greyhound of the airways thinks they are too exclusive for this so forbid them all from listing their fares and now they have a disastrous crash that has taken down their site for almost an entire day costing them millions.