northinsouth

I didn't know that. Thanks for the correction. Would those agreements matter in this kind of situation?

flyerCO

Yes. It means they can rebook you onto those carriers.

kale73

I've rarely found them the cheapest option for the routes I want/need to take. They don't even fly to two of the airports I frequent.

Could you elucidate further on how Southwest's policies and procedures have led you to avoid flying Singapore Airlines?

xliioper

Looks like poster meant to type SW and not SQ. northinsouth, to be clear, Southwest has no interline agreements and won't put people on other carriers.

flyerCO

If OP meant SW, his reply to my reply makes no sense.

northinsouth

I meant SW. I'm a moron. I wasn't paying close enough attention and tripped up this thread. My bad.

kale73

If OP meant SW wouldn't OP have typed WN?

northinsouth

Again, my idiocy. Apologies for confusion.

kale73

Not a problem, except that after years on FlyerTalk my brain automatically 'decodes' those two letter IATA airline abbreviations (at least the ones I know). I seriously thought you were somehow relating an experience on Singapore to one on Southwest. It's difficult to imagine two more 'different' air carriers. (Okay, maybe Emirates and Spirit, etc.).

The Situation

Yep, my flight in a couple days is to a destination with significant WN operations. My flight went from 65 empty seats on xmas eve to being sold out this morning.

Duke787

Canceling flights is actually likely their best move operationally. Since their IT melted down, canceling flights actually clears the board completely so they don’t have to figure out matching pilots manually to routes (which apparently is what they are doing).

The full scale cancel clears the tables so they can restart at some point in the next few days with the rosters that the scheduling software has queued up for January. Now of course that doesn’t take into account all the passengers getting screwed in the process but from a pure ops standpoint what they are doing is probably the best move.

Long term they clearly need to be investing in their IT and this yet again highlights the discrepancy between airlines taking large sums of money during Covid and airlines engaging in stock buybacks instead of investing in their technology stack.

If the US had EU261 type of measures in place, this would’ve been contained within 24-36 hours because the cost of investing in the technology would’ve been cheaper than the risk of EU261 style payouts

cre95

Not sure how having a large economic impact would result in SW’s issue being contained within 24-36 hours.

I can see saying that SW would be quick to decide to upgrade their IT systems but the upgrade itself will take months to implement.

DELee

Yeah. OK. Months for operational software development and deployment and testing. Go with that.

I have a bridge for sale in a certain location as well as prime real estate in central Florida should anyone be interested who thinks that said software will only be a few months away.

David

ijgordon

To me, the point is that if the US had protection regulations in place, WN may have previously invested in its systems and wouldn’t be in this situation now. Of course it would take time.

kavok

The other part of this is that it’s not just a few WN stations that are hurting… it’s their entire domestic operation… ie everywhere. When one place is decimated, it’s easy to target. Again, this is WNs entire network in shambles.

So even if DL did have some spare crews and planes, where should they fly them to? It’s not like only airports X, Y, Z are having WN meltdowns, and so DL can fly a spare bird on X/Y/Z to ATL/DTW/etc.