prestonh

c'mon. false equivalence much? the undesirable outcome(s) of not wearing a seatbelt ranges from a traffic ticket to a range of bad injuries to death. The undesirable effect of Choosing a different air carrier comes nowhere close to that (are you going to die from flying B6?).

ani90

It's not about the magnitude of effect but rather insurance from infrequent events. Ok forget seatbelts - travel insurance, pet insurance, home insurance, whatever, it is all about doing or paying extra to accommodate for rare events.

ContinentalFan

The issue here is that it seems so widespread and, based on local media coverage, catastrophic! I’ve watched news reports around the country and the various stations are making a major story out of it.

Let’s see what happens next. I expect Congress to stick its nose into this issue.

JMontpelier

Not this week. Family members are renting a car tomorrow for return PHX-SJC after WN cancelled their flight.

prestonh

ok, fair enough. but for the average, non-elite flyer is UA all that better from the other carriers? For instance hours on hold to do flight changes (when the app doesn't work or cant do a ticket change), weather related meltdowns which we all know airlines won't cover hotels for and sometimes wont have flights for days, the famous HUCA, let's go on and on. is it worth the premium?

ani90

Probably not, UA has issues too. Agree FT not representative by any means. If you fly just once or twice a year doesn't really matter who you fly - it's a lottery how it ends up. But for those who fly multiple or numerous times a year, stuff like this will catch up on you, sooner or later, if you pick the cheapest airline and cheapest fare each time.

HNLbasedFlyer

What premium - Southwest is not a discount airline - often higher than the Big 3

lincolnjkc

If you're a non-elite (and don't fly enough to be an elite on any airline) I guess it's a crapshoot whomever you fly... But when you fly enough it is absolutely worth the premium IMO. UA has extended hotel vouchers (which I wound up not using because they actually got me on a flight out). Agents (not robots) have proactively protected me, then called me to let me know (or in one really funny case protected me and didn't say anything until I panicked because I didn't remember booking that flight)... And how often does the no-status passenger actually have a ticket change that the app or website can't handle? I think for me it's been years at this point.

mfirst

Not to distract from the 'blame' to Southwest - but I also wonder how much of this is related to the complex and probably unbendable rules that flight crew must live by thanks to the government regulations that people are not screaming that they want to see more of.

mduell

It sounds like their problem is primarily they don't know what city crew members are in, rather than the minutiae of the crew legality regulations.

But kneejerk regulation isn't going to address that underlying cause.

NDtraveler

This thread cracks me up. This happens and all airlines experience it. Do you not remember the global outage United had back in 2009 (?). I do, my brother was supposed to fly IAD to FCO and got stranded at the airport. Could not talk to an airline rep at all, ended up rebooking himself to make it there before his tour started on Lufthansa. United had the balls to tell him the delay was weather related and offered $100 compensation. He actually swore to never fly United again and somehow has actually kept to it.

Living in Austin, United makes little sense because I do not want to connect. I have had some status since 2001 and this is the first year I won't requalify and I don't miss it one bit.

I feel for the southwest folks, it certainly sucks and many of my friends are on long road trips now

LarryJ

There's a number of issues and that does play into it as well.

Weather caused the disruption. I.T. and telco issues have prevented SWA from recovering as quickly as everyone else.

Machines fail in extreme cold. You don't know what will work and what won't or how long it will take to get them working. When temperatures are significantly colder than normal for an area the employees don't know how to deal with it so they are less efficient, don't know how to work the machine in the cold, and many of them can't or don't come to work. All of the airlines delt with these issue.

SWA's I.T. hasn't been updated to keep up with the airline as it has grown is size and complexity. I recently learned that the crew scheduling software apparently doesn't get real-time inputs (or enough inputs?) from the operations software which records delays, cancellations, out/in times, etc. When there are exceptions, they have to be input manually. That may work at a small airline but is unmanageable at this scale with widespread disruptions. This is how they "lost" their crews.

In the old days, it was relatively easy to figure out pilot legality. The new 14 CFR 117 rules for pilots are too complex. There are too many variables. You need a computer to reliably confirm legality. It also means that pilots and flight attendants are scheduled under different rules so you can't treat one full crew as a group.

Crewmembers can't contact the schedulers because the schedulers are overwhelmed. The only way I know to address this is through automation. The difference in the number of schedulers you need to work a wide-spread disruption, compared to what you need during normal ops, is significant. I don't know the multiple but 10x wouldn't surprise me at all. Maybe more. You need automation to take care of as much of the schedule repair as possible because it isn't possible to multiply your staff by 10x when a disruption event occurs. Other airlines have significantly more automation in these processes than SWA apparently has but they still don't have enough.

Lux Flyer

Maybe not for you, individually, or others on FlyerTalk who rely on the reservations line for rebooking and/or already have been given UA options for rebooking since the automated IRROPs engine prioritizes elite status for open seats on the later flights. But your perception of the record and what actually occurs is substantially different, as the over 500k+ invol coupons redeemed so far by OA carriers for travel this year alone paints quite a different picture than you are suggesting. Though the airports do OA rebookings at close to 3x the rate contact centers do, likely because their sole focus is getting passengers on the way, have better insight to OA capacity at their station, can liaison with OA carriers regarding space more readily, and aren't trained on other policies that they then mix pieces together from when doing IRROPs/schedule changes/voluntary changes. But regardless, your claim about the "record" is flat out wrong.

SteveOh

I’m not feeling that right now.

A family member flew in from Pittsburgh to Chicago for the holiday weekend. She normally flies Southwest but this time went with United because flying into O’Hare was better for our plans on arrival day. The return flight was supposed to be (yesterday) Monday night. It was canceled shortly before boarding. No meal vouchers offered, no compensation offered, nothing. I think they were willing to put her up in a hotel but I just picked her up because they couldn’t even give her an alternate flight. Later she got rebooked on a Wednesday night flight, 51 hours after her original flight was supposed to depart. Today…She spent hours on hold waiting to talk to somebody to line up an earlier flight. Finally a flight for tonight opened up on the app but she couldn’t check in or get a seat assignment. She was still on hold waiting for an agent at that point, and about 20 or 30 minutes later the agent was able to give her a seat assignment.

By comparison, she had tickets on Southwest ~eight years ago to fly from MDW to New York during that blizzard that literally shut down New York City. Southwest would not honor the original ticket price ($41!!) but did not gouge for the rebooking price and she was able to get on a flight a day or so earlier and beat the blizzard. This was done easily over the phone without an unreasonable time on hold or anything like that.

She had to use vacation time from her job because United couldn’t and wouldn’t get her back when they were supposed to.

I heard almost nothing in the news about United having anywhere near the kind of difficulties that Southwest did. However dealing with United was far more difficult than I expected. Eight years ago when we scrambled to rebook on Southwest, it was shortly before a major weather event that everyone knew was going to disrupt things badly. It wasn’t a big deal. This time, with United, it was days after the weather had cleared and it was like they were blindsided…so frustrating…next time I go to Pittsburgh to visit her I’d rather drive the nine hours than deal with this nonsense. Even though the flight itself is short, travel time to the airport, parking, getting a rental car at the destination and then driving to where I need to end up takes about 6 1/2 hours. My relative can’t drive that kind of distance unfortunately.

seat38a

You do know that Southwest isn't rebooking anyone until the new year right? Compare that 51 hours as a non elite with United vs 168+ hour minimum to get on Southwest.

I maybe wrong but most of us regulars in the United Forum have some level of elite status or United Club membership that lets us cut in front of the general or non members and or have direct access to someone who can help us in the Club.