palmetto86

I understand there was a big national storm, but WN's problems right now are purely operational incompetence. My family was flying WN DEN-RDU on 12/24 after several cancellations on AA on 12/22 and 12/23. Plane was at gate, bags loaded, fueled up, two pilots, but only one FA. Hours go by with no FAs to be found and the airline's largest hub. Flight finally cancels after 6 hrs at the airport.

Southwest then refused to return any luggage saying all bags would be flown to RDU. My family called it quits, we wanted to go home, and cancel our entire trip. I didn't really care about my stuff. But I certainly cared about our toddler's carseat. Southwest wouldn't even retrieve that.

I'm not even sure what to do now. Phone lines are clogged. The airport is mess. The baggage office has a day's long line outside. No way to file claims online or in a convenient way. This experience is a big bruise on a brand I'm usually a fan of. Scrolling through Twitter seems like many folks are in the exact same situation nationwide. I feel for the employees. Incompetence this bad comes from the top.

LegalTender

80% of call-waiting time is saved if you pick Spanish.

"Para español, marque dos" gets you an agent who's always - yes, always - bi-lingual.

That's for later. It's generally a busy signal right now.

NoStressHere

Gonna guess since the vast majority of folks are still waiting to fly, the bags from that plane will be off loaded and kept together for future flights to their destination. Though it is possible for a human to go through thousands of bags to find a few particular ones.... it requires extra staffing to do exactly that. And right now the staffing is being torn to shreds dealing with so many flight changes, etc. Imagine a gate attendant announcing that another flight is being delayed because all of our ground crew is busy looking for certain bags for a few people. And then eventually cancelled that flight as well.

So, it is less of a refusal and more of "we just can not do it" situation.

Sucks, but....

wrp96

The situation in DEN is more extreme than elsewhere with no one to work the ramp https://viewfromthewing.com/southwes...ers-showed-up/

LegalTender

The notion swamped baggage staff recruit from another labor pool and impede ops is absurd.

NoStressHere

Notes:

42% / 1635 flights cancelled on Sunday
50% / 2035 cancelled on Monday. (as of 1pm central)

Lots of flights cancelled from Thurs/Friday and Saturday as well.

LegalTender

Prepping for the hub/spoke denialism. Always takes them longer to reset.

But the Christmas parties are the best in industry.

zachary

I'm having the same issue with a relative trying to fly STL-ATL. On Saturday, her flight was canceled. She was able to rebook to Sunday. On Sunday, she went to the airport and checked two bags. Three hours later, at about 1:30 a.m. on Monday morning, they canceled the flight. They had a crew ready to go, but they needed someone at WN to move two flight attendants from a canceled STL-DAL flight to the ATL flight. The FAs were there, but -- this is what they said -- they couldn't get anyone at headquarters to answer their calls to move the FAs. They told everyone that their bags would go to ATL and did not try to offload them. Passengers (this was a sold out MAX) were told to either wait in line at the ticket counter, which was a complete mob scene, or to rebook online. The problem: when I tried to change the reservation online, the website said that the flight is from a prior day and you need to call to change it. The hold time is obviously off the charts.

This is a pretty big meltdown. It'll be interesting to see what kind of vouchers they issue, or whether they say it's weather and don't give anything. I'm leaning toward the former.

lougord99

I had the exact same thing happen trying to go MDW to MSP. I was able to talk to the baggage office and they said the bags would eventually go to MSP and eventually then return to MDW. The absolutely hilarious thing is that when I tried to cancel the auto rebooked flight, the web site would not allow me to do so because I 'already had bags checked onto this flight' which was 3 days in the future.

nsx

I’m so glad I’m not flying this week. One family member has a UA transcon nonstop which seems pretty safe.

I really hope I don’t need to call Southwest early on January 4 to activate my 2 month companion pass.

matt21

Feels like Southwest is imploding right now. Checked my flight today at 3am and it was good, checked at 4am and it was cancelled. No text/alert, rebooked family on separate flights. I took a chance and bought Spirit tickets at 430am. Since then Southwest has cancelled almost 2/3 of their flights today. Almost everything is sold out for a week. Cannot imagine how this doesn't compound and demand some sort of reset. The lost luggage situation alone is horrific.

keneshhagard

Easiest way and I’ve done this is cancel yourself off the flight. Then WN is forced to return your bag because now it’s a security issue. They don’t mess around with that.

NoStressHere

Based on tons of posts... not sure that is gonna work.

diver858

Same issue in SAN; GF's daughter was supposed to fly SAN-SFO at 8:30 am today, flight was cancelled around 1 pm. Insufficient staff to return bags, still thousands of bags piled up from prior day's cancellations.
Public address announcements suggested WN's systems are unable to advise what pilots have timed out, when those pilots who have not yet timed out will.

diver858

So what happens when a flight is cancelled? Based on a current description of the cluster in SAN, there are still piles of checked bags that have not yet been returned from prior days cancellations.