kaller

Thankfully their field team seems to display empathy and has the latitude to employ various, albeit random, solutions (marking A16 on paper BP, selling improved boarding positions for $40 and then cutting a travel vouchers for $40, lining-up A and AP separately to board after Biz Select, etc.).

The AP and Rapid Rewards phone staff lacks the tools to help in a meaningful way and are generally reading from a script.

Just wish the e-mail said:

1. We've screwed-up and impacted our most loyal and valuable customers and we're truly sorry.
2. We've asked our Operations Agents to ensure A and AP customers board after Business Select. It won't be perfect, but it is better than having you board after A60.
3. We'll take steps to remedy the situation so you won't need to call our phone agents to restore your status on your future reservations.
4. We'll compensate you for this terrible inconvenience.

Nope, not what we got......

steved5480

I emailed the RR folks at 1am Herb Time this morning (Monday).

A very nice rep called me about noon today to report that she was in the process of fixing my 13 existing future reservations. As of 2pm, they all appear to be back to normal displaying A+ (the EBCI option is gone). I didn't fuss at her because she didn't break it, and was nice enough to take the time to call. I didn't press her for intel re: the overall impact, although it was quite obvious from the conversation that the customer service impact is massive.

bofc

[QUOTE=kcmo57;28689108]This morning MCI-DEN GA handled things extremely well. He announced that boarding procedures would be a little different this morning. He had A1-15 line up normally, then A-list Preferred in one single file line, and A-list in another single file line, and everyone else by their boarding pass position like normal. He boarded A1-15, AP, A, then A16 and on. I doubt that all gates are configured to allow this approach, but for my flight, I think the GA honored the intent for their best customers just great!
/QUOTE]

This seems like such an obvious (and easy) solution until it's fixed. Why on earth don't they do this routinely? I had no such service oriented gate agent at Midway today. The woman seemed annoyed that I'd bother her with my trivial problem of getting a middle seat on a 4 1/2 hour flight to Oakland even if I'm AP. This is a simmering crisis made worse by how WN is treating their best customers.

tusphotog

Two upcoming flights for me: one was booked ~8 weeks ago and the other was booked a few days ago. Both showed my status was gone. Called the A+ line today, had an agent answer on one ring, she took my two PNRs, went off and did her thing for 10 minutes and my A+ status was back.

She did mention "IT is working on it" and that i still should check in at T-24. Not too concerned with this, but I am going to keep an eye on all of my upcoming reservations, and I'll probably hold off on booking too many more flights until it's fixed.

dmbolp

Story on the USA TODAY app, even quoted this thread:

Check out this article from USA TODAY:

Southwest Airlines computer glitch hits frequent fliers

https://usat.ly/2w5SrQV

dmbolp

Southwest acknowledges there is a problem. Spokeswoman Michelle Agnew said in a statement that priority check-in and boarding positions for top-tier members of Southwest's Rapid Rewards frequent-flier program are affected.

"This has resulted in boarding positions that are less typical than what our A-List and A-List Preferred Rapid Rewards customers have come to expect,'' she said.

I always love this corporate "blame it on the customers' expectations" that's the problem...we shouldn't have such high expectations. Hey, we just want what you offered, better boarding position if we use you frequently, nothing to do with our "expectations"

pvan

This morning MCI-DEN GA handled things extremely well. He announced that boarding procedures would be a little different this morning. He had A1-15 line up normally, then A-list Preferred in one single file line, and A-list in another single file line, and everyone else by their boarding pass position like normal. He boarded A1-15, AP, A, then A16 and on. I doubt that all gates are configured to allow this approach, but for my flight, I think the GA honored the intent for their best customers just great!



As a former airline employee I proposed this solution a couple of days ago. Someone replied that WN does not have effective communication...airline employees typically have a briefing board, urgent communications displayed when they log in to the computer system, in briefing etc... To think that WN cannot convey this solution to it's employees is absurd.

pvan

As a former airline employee I proposed this solution a couple of days ago. Someone replied that WN does not have effective communication...airline employees typically have a briefing board, urgent communications displayed when they log in to the computer system, in briefing etc... To think that WN cannot convey this solution to it's employees is absurd.

Hot Pocket

Perhaps an encouraging data point. I was on the phone with CS yesterday fixing my Thursday flight and they were able to confirm that the new online booking I had made earlier in the day was correctly showing ALP status.

PappaShacks

Excellent news. I just checked in online for a flight this afternoon and was very pleased to find A-17 sitting there and my status attached. Maybe this means the issue is fixed?

rsteinmetz70112

Not on my account.

A few flights coming up soon have been updated but flights farther out have not. I was told yesterday they have people working to manually update upcoming flights but that an automatic fix will be deployed sometime in the future to fix flights further out.

joshua362

This. From the CEO down to the FA at WN, what seat and comfort you get is a trivial matter as long as they sell you one.

ursine1

The short-term solution is obvious, simple, and costs Southwest absolutely nothing to implement.

If not a communication issue, why in the world would they not do it?

konems

It wouldn't be summer without a crippling Southwest IT issue that lasts many days and is met with a collective shrug from most of its customer-facing employees. Fun times.

Luckily I'm only on BS fares until 12 days from now so I can wait this out. I usually use WN's Twitter DMs for quickly fixing issues for me, has anyone found that to possibly be more efficient for fixing their reservations?

LegalTender

My guess is once RR#s were purged/deleted it was impossible to reinstate them en bloc. New bookings should be good. The one who programmed the account extraction needs a jolly good rogering.