So a friend of mine is married to a southwest pilot. He went to an airport where he was supposed to fly out the other day, and finally managed to get through the scheduling and he gave them a list of planes. They were like”thanks we really needed that”. He also gave them a list of eight people hanging around the airport who worked for the airline and would like to get on a plane and fly some passengers somewhere


Seriously!?


the sad part is he thinks this has already been done a couple of times so they probably all have different people working on the solution. His fear is is they’re going to get three different sets of orders telling them to go three different places on three different planes.


his wife says he’s putting in applications with other airlines that he’s done- enough is enough and this was the final blow. He’s willing to give up seniority just to get away from this disaster. Now he may just be talking and he’ll probably back down, but it does show that there’s obviously some level of frustration with the staff. But considering she is the primary earner, he could afford to give up seniority.

I've been following WN's daily cancellation rates both real-time and projected out 2 days on FlightAware. While today they are were projected a few days out to have around 2400 flight cancellations, which has been their daily starting point for the past few days, they are at 2363 cancellations for today so far. Tomorrow they are only projecting 39 and Saturday none.

So it appears that they are attempting to run a full schedule tomorrow December 30th, sans a few cancellations. Of course only time will tell if they can get all their pilots and FAs at their starting points for the day with a full set of hours of available flying time.

Let's just hope there is not another major weather event in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Southwest Business VP David Harvey continues taking cringe selfies and posting them on LinkedIn. Read the room, you clown.

People have lost organ transplantations and people will die from driving in inclement weather rather than flying. You just don’t notice those deaths because they’re diffused across the entire USA and attributed to something else, even though the underlying cause is SW’s network collapse.

Right now the three biggest lies are from SW:

1. Your flight will go out as scheduled.
2. Your luggage is secure.
3. Your refund check is in the mail.

From SLC the drive to Phoenix in a day is reasonable via Vegas. Most all is four lane highway. The best part of driving is that before coming home you can stock up on adult beverages to enjoy through the winter.

It’s going to be really upsetting to miss this event. There is Time to cancel for flight credit and pay another airline or just drive. Gl gl

Seriously? If you were a betting person, how much would you risk on the flight happening?

Assuming WN will reimburse the cost of the car rental, incidentals to drive to PHX if when the flight is cancelled, I would plan to drive, be prepared to take the flight in the unlikely event it happens.

Even better: as others have suggested, book a backup flight on AA or DL, avoid the WN stress.

It's being reported that they'll cancel ⅔ of their flights the rest of the year, so their email about back to normal is bs.

If you really want to ensure you get there, drive.

https://liveandletsfly.com/southwest...down-response/

Southwest Airlines is in full meltdown…this is no hyperbole when the carrier is talking about canceling 2/3 of its flights for the rest of 2022. Let’s look at how Southwest is publicly and privately addressing its operational collapse.

I'm tracking the plane that is currently scheduled to take my sister and her family home tomorrow. After idling for four days in SJC, today it did SJC-RNO-DAL. It's supposed to then fly DAL-STL soon, then idle for almost 12 hours before doing STL-HOU-MIA-DEN. So far no delays. Keeping my fingers crossed. I'm supposed to fly SRQ-MCI-DEN on Saturday.

That article is from two days ago, and they basically did cancel 2/3 of their flights. That said, it has absolutely no bearing on what will happen tomorrow. The cancellations for the last few days were announced well in advance, and so far, they are not cancelling much for tomorrow. We all know how horrible WN is with IRROPS, but tomorrow morning they will be starting fresh with a clean plate, so things SHOULD go as normally unless some unforeseen issue arises. Even their abysmal IT clearly works pretty well for a normal day, and if all the crew and planes are where they are supposed to be at 05:00, there is no reason that it would not be a normal day, at least from an operational standpoint.

How do you find the aircraft that’s supposed to fly your route?

I sense that a large fare sale early next year will probably have a lot of people forget about this fiasco.

One easy way is FlightAware: search for your flight and they will have a link to show where your plane is now.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...64331bd4d2.jpg

Probably, but maybe not the business passengers and solidly/upper-middle-class passengers Southwest has been going after for the past decade. Southwest wants to compete with the legacies, not with Spirit and Allegiant.

Plenty of business travelers have been taking Southwest because it's easy, they have a massive route network, and with A-List or Business Select you can avoid most of the Southwest downsides. But business travelers also like getting places on time and without hassle, and this lack of reliability, which apparently has routes deep in their IT systems and operational structure, will rattle a lot of those travelers.

It will also rattle a lot of people who fly mostly during holidays for family visits and big events. Even a lot of budget travelers are going to be nervous about booking Southwest if they sense they might be spending summer vacation on Thanksgiving at the Love Field McDonalds.