I agree -- while I'm as cynical as anyone about airlines handling these things, I find it very difficult to believe that they will turn back and say “haha, we just said we’d ‘consider’; we did, and decided to just go with the strict CoC, so no reimbursement for you!” That FAQ statement had to be authorized from the highest levels and was very clear and specific: “We will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation.” Even the use of "reimbursement" has very specific meaning as some on FT like to nitpick (vs "compensation", "refund", or "customer service gesture"), and can really only consist of a cash payment to make up for a cash expense for one of those things. And unlike things like "flat tire rules" that aren't written and thus verbal assurances from agents can be walked back, this was posted in writing on an official Southwest site for everyone to screenshot (hopefully!). So I remain optimistic that the highest levels of Southwest management will continue to authorize following through.

So what if it costs $1 million or $10 million or $100 million -- all well below their net income for the last 12 months. If they do right by the customers and make sure they get the good press for doing so over the next couple months (along with fixing the underlying system problems), the long term value is far far higher than that. And as I've mentioned before, I suspect they know the DOT fine is going to be in that ballpark anyway, and they likely will be able to count these reimbursements to customers toward that.

And I don't have a good insight to the total reimbursement costs -- while there are MANY people who are going to incur multi-hundred-$$ hotel and alternate airline costs, I don't think that's in the millions of people. A large portion of people have $0 costs (other than the refund); yes they missed going to grandma's house or wherever, but nothing reimbursable (a goodwill voucher will be appreciated). Another large portion just drove a rental car a few hours (for a family of 4 that might be ~$25-50/person), another large portion got a hotel room for a night then a reasonablly-comparable flight on another airline. Not at all trying to minimize the impact on individuals or the total cost, just that I think that it will be manageable.

Way back in the 90s, my company had a flaw in a product that didn't really affect most of what people used it for, but they danced around it for a few weeks, trying to minimize and getting a lot of bad press. Eventually they decided to offer anyone who wanted a replacement part and took a charge of close to a quarter's net earnings. They set up a phone bank in a big conference room at a number of sites and asked all of us to volunteer for a shift. We took calls from consumers and explained the issue, offering to take their name to send a replacement right away or to send a letter promising a replacement any time in the future if they wanted. I personally spoke to a number of people who were worried and angry when they called, but felt a lot better treated by the end. And guess what -- the number that took the actual replacement was a lot lower than expected, and the goodwill that generated was much better than the bad press we had been getting.