nsx

Given that people book Hawaii vacation travel many months in advance, it's entirely possible that not enough empty seats remained at any price to accommodate all or substantially all of Southwest's ATA customers. That appears to be what Bill Owen is asserting, and I find it believable.

If there were enough empty seats at full fare, then you are right. If there were not, then Southwet faced a PR problem no matter what it did.

alliance

111 days spanned WN's May 4 - Aug 22 window where they screwed their ~20,000 customers. That's ~180 people/day.

Are you really telling me you believe there weren't/aren't that many daily seats in each direction across all carriers and route options?

nsx

These 20k people were not spread across all markets and all dates like peanut butter. They were probably bunched around weekends and concentrated on cities other than HNL. I find it easy to believe that the remaining unsold seats were not sufficient to accommodate 100% of the 20k passengers without date changes and possibly destination changes.

Bill also mentioned issues like ability to reasonably connect with Southwest flights at the gateway city. Other carriers will not connect as conveniently as ATA did. (If this were the only issue, I would have preferred that Southwest let the customer decide if the inconvenience was worth it.)

Should Southwest have spent millions of dollars if the result was going to be 5,000 very happy people, 10,000 partly happy people, and 5000 very unhappy people? The old Southwest, before 9/11 and $100 oil, might have said yes. But times are harder all around now. The critical question is whether a large number of people would have been left in the very unhappy category regardless of how much Southwest had spent. I believe that answer is yes, but that belief still requires a leap of faith beyond what has been posted.

alliance

I just ran some queries in Apollo and Sabre for weekends in July and see well over 1,500 seats each weekend in July available. I wasn't including First class or all city options. The results were further limited by the GDS to 7 to 9 seats per flight max and lots of flights have MANY more than that available. And of course that doesn't take in to account the availability on flights the rest of the week.

I'm sorry nsx, but I just can't believe that they actually couldn't find seats that would reasonably work for customers. We're only talking about 20,000 people here.

This is all about money and WN no longer valuing their commitment to customers. If they didn't want to spend the money they shouldn't have made the promises they did.

nsx

You make a solid case, and I'm disappointed Bill Owen has not yet answered the "at any price" question. If he doesn't answer it, I will assume that your analysis is correct as to the seat count, and the claimed shortfall of seats was actually a shortfall of seats at reasonable fares.

If so, then Southwest appears to have justified its decision not to rebook people as due to terminal changes and/or multiple connections: "there were simply too few seats left available to offer all of our Customers suitable rebooking options." As I wrote before, the suitability decision should have been the passenger's to make. Perhaps "reasonable fare" is one aspect of "suitable" in Southwest's terminology?

Whatever it was, Bill Owen says that it wasn't merely a matter of financial cost: "we just couldn�t find a way to logistically do it". Was a staff limitation, that the rebooking staff would fall farther and farther behind as they moved into summer? No: it doesn't take a genius to figure out how to solve that problem.

The rebooking cutoff date was chosen to allow people enough time to qualify for advance purchase fares, and that aspect was certainly considerate.

I wish Southwest would reveal the precise reasoning behind their decision, rather than reflexively protecting internal information and limiting public discussion to generalities like "the only realistic option" and "logistics". Otherwise it's human nature to suspect a cover-up, and that does not benefit Southwest.

Regardless, I'd rather forgive Southwest for overpromising in this case than to convince them that no good deed goes unpunished.

blackburried

I had called Southwest's special rebooking number (before I was supposed to), and the agent told me that: they were rebooking faster than they expected, and those needing rebooking only got more sparse as time went on, so while their official rebooking time table had my travel dates out two weeks before rebooking, he wouldn't be surprised if they gave me a call the next week.

That directly contradicts any "internal logistic problems" Bill claims.

So, your "D* if they do D* if they don't" PR conclusion:

... is (as you say above) erroneous (since actually rebooking was possible logistically, both internally and externally, and therefore would have been great PR), and the _ONLY_ reason left for changing their minds on how they were going to handle us was cost, and _ALL_ the rest of their excuses for their change of mind is complete B.S. and lies.

Note that I'm not saying that changing their mind on how they were going to rebook us was a premeditated lie (as I believe they did initially intend to do as they said), I'm saying the reasoning they provided us for their change of mind was full of bald-face lies and intentional deception.

I would have forgiven the change of mind in an instant had they just said "We promised more than we could deliver and we've decided we can't afford the cost of rebooking". Instead, they decided to "spin" their way out with lies.

Bill's lack of response to your question is because you've backed him into a corner to either admit these lies or just pretend it never happened and hope the bad PR (generated by both the "change of mind" and subsequent B.S. and lying excuse list) goes away.

nsx

Yes, the initial statement would have been different had they made the decision up front.

That would have been easier for everyone to understand and respect.

I'm nearing a conclusion that Southwest's unattainable objective was rebooking at reasonable cost, not simply rebooking. Why they didn't just come right out and state it this way, I don't understand. There's no shame in honestly changing an initial decision after careful thought. Full disclosure that financial constraints restricted the options would have been better PR and shown more respect for the customer's intelligence.

When a company gives respect, it gets respect back. Including our understanding for their need to change a decision for good reasons.

formeraa

Trust me, there were definitely enough seats left. I'm not saying that some travelers' dates may have had to shift by a day (or two), but the seats are definitely out there.

That being said, if WN had researched this issues before making their initial promise, then passengers would have understood and been able to re-book at lower rates.

As someone stated earlier, in the old days, Herb probably would have called Bob over at AA and asked for a somewhat discounted rate on the re-booked Hawaii travel. Bob would have crunched the numbers and offered Herb a deal on the rebookings. Unfortunately, those days are over...

ikeatroll

Incidentally, AA was offering discounted rates for stranded ATA passengers booked on flights up until May 3rd. Could be Southwest was counting on being able to strike a deal for continued preferential rates but the remaining carriers didn't see enough of an incentive in doing so. You don't need personal relationships to get a discount for bringing in 20.000 customers, but in this case, the other carriers could have just thought that they'd fill the flights anyway.