Originally Posted by
guflyer
After their December fiasco, has Southwest cleaned up in a way that they can be deemed as reliable as other carriers, or is it less likely that one will arrive as scheduled on Southwest than on other airlines?
Yesterday, my flight on Southwest was cancelled. Neither of the cities that I flew to or from had significant issues. I rescheduled my flight for this morning, which was no longer non-stop. One of those flights was now cancelled.
Today, I noticed that Chicago MDW seems to have a lot more cancellations of Southwest flights, while ORD has mainly delays on other airlines. This has me wondering whether I can still rely on Southwest, or if I need to start booking on other airlines when I need to be somewhere urgently.
southwest is one carrier
the 3 major airlines of subcontractors operating many of their routes.
the big difference is thst they are not designed as a hub-spoke model.
thr big carriers have their ma8n aircraft run primarily between the large markets. The subcontracted routes are back and forth feeders. Their individual issues don’t have compounding problems.
southwest runs routes with the same aircraft of a to b to c to d to e in a day. You might be on d-e but the problrm is in a-b which has a weather delay thst delay caus3 the crew past their operational time fir the d-e flight thus cancelling it,
all airlines due to Covid retirements snd cuts have decimated the crews that are not easy to replace like cashiers st Walmart.