Southwest Airlines Cancelled 2/3rds of flights
Hey everyone, I was browsing around and noticed Southwest is cancelling 2/3rds of their flights up until Saturday due to issues within their system. I figured this was relevant news for anyone that is traveling and may have booked their flights to the CFP through them.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:02 PM ^
Should add that emails have been sent to individuals who flights were cancelled. May not have any bearing on anyone but felt it was relevant for some people.
December 27th, 2022 at 2:57 PM ^
Good work, Mike
December 27th, 2022 at 6:09 PM ^
Uh, not us, and I checked my spam folder too. Where did you hear this?
December 27th, 2022 at 9:33 PM ^
I received one with the innocuous title of "Irregular Operations." Here is what it said,
"We sincerely apologize if your recent travel plans have been impacted. Our Purpose is to connect People to what's important in their lives, and we know your time is valuable. Due to adverse weather events and their resulting effects, we are currently experiencing operational disruptions and are working diligently and safely to restore normal flight schedules as quickly as possible.
"As we do this, your flight may be impacted, and we encourage you to check your flight status regularly for more details.
"If your flight is canceled, you should receive a notification. Please visit our Travel Disruption page for options: Southwest.com/TravelDisruption. If you have not received a notification, no action is needed but continue to check your flight status regularly.
"If your flight was canceled and you would like a refund, please submit a request here. We will work to process your refund as soon as possible.
"When significant adverse weather conditions occur, the impact on our operation is widespread. Reaccommodation becomes challenging with fewer flights operating, and, as a result, it takes time to help each Customer, which causes our Customers to encounter long hold times and long lines. While we can’t always predict the challenges brought about by the busy holiday travel season, we apologize that the irregular operations may have interrupted your travel plans."
I received a text message about my cancellation last night at 11 pm (Denver time) after having received a boarding pass about eight hours earlier. Thank you so much, Southwest Airlines.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:04 PM ^
Nearly all SW flights leaving Phoenix canceled even though weather is great here:
December 27th, 2022 at 5:18 PM ^
It’s all about flight crews and scheduling, has nothing to do with weather at this point.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:09 PM ^
Brutal. So glad I didn't travel this year. We didn't get much snow here--unlike Western NY and the Midwest, I guess.
December 27th, 2022 at 3:24 PM ^
I drove and it was a pain in the ass. I live in Toronto and we go to see my wife's family in Appalachia, so we have to cross the border twice.
We usually use the Peace Bridge in Buffalo (it's slightly quicker), but that was closed because of all the snow they had over the weekend. The Blue Water Bridge to Sarnia was also closed because of the snow they had up there.
Which leaves Windsor. We took the Ambassador Bridge, and it was a mess.
On the plus side, I haven't driven through Michigan since legalization. Loved all the billboards for "O-high-oans" to stop and buy some legal marijuana.
December 27th, 2022 at 5:03 PM ^
Cannabis billboards seemingly everywhere in Michigan now. Best name I’ve seen is, “House of Dank”.
December 27th, 2022 at 10:19 PM ^
Sure seems like there are only three types of billboards: personal injury lawyers, gambling and dispensaries. I leave it to you all to decide which provides the greatest social good.
December 27th, 2022 at 4:36 PM ^
2 days of driving is the shitty alternative
December 27th, 2022 at 1:12 PM ^
I used to like SW. Ancient history. The company is using software that doesn't work terribly well, to say nothing about staffing shortages. Planes and crews seem to not be meshing terribly well. SW got a new CEO about a year ago. Good luck with job security.
American had about 1% of flights cancelled yesterday; Southwest had 70%,
December 27th, 2022 at 1:32 PM ^
It's incredulous to me that WN (Southwest) hasn't changed their strategy of how they route airplanes through their network.
Last Tuesday, I was on the DEN-DTW leg of a Southwest flight that went ONT-OAK-DEN-DTW-BWI-PWM over the course of the day. They literally started a plane in SoCal and ended it in Maine, same flight number and airplane the entire way, the plane making 5 different stops along the way. Most of their airplanes are scheduled to do stuff like this daily.
Problem is: if there's an issue in Denver/upstream, then all the downstream flights get affected, even if there are no operational issues at those airports.
Most other airlines leverage their hub-and-spoke model: Delta will fly a plane on a given day, say, GRR-DTW-STL-DTW-STL. That way if there is weather in DTW (their hub) or STL (the spoke that plane hits multiple times in one day), it doesn't really affect other flights/cities. They could cancel those 2 middle flights and the airplane is still in the right spot for the last flight.
This is an operational/logistical change that really HAS to happen for Southwest. They have evolved to being a bit of a hub-and-spoke airline anyway. Their current routing structure doesn't isolate risk.
One absurd stat: Southwest has cancelled 90%+ of their flights the last 2 days at my hometown airport of Burbank, where their non-stops are almost exclusively to west of the Rockies locales. It's been sunny and 70 in Burbank for a week!
December 27th, 2022 at 2:09 PM ^
Ok, but you can’t use “incredulous” like that. Sorry, had to…
December 27th, 2022 at 2:16 PM ^
Can I channel my inner Lloyd Carr and use a version of his favorite word instead?
It's tremendously strange to me (rest of post).
December 27th, 2022 at 2:29 PM ^
Haha. Yeah, I didn’t know anything about what you pointed out re: routing. That’s unusual. I’m fortunate to have DTW as home base and Delta is usually pretty good operationally.
December 27th, 2022 at 3:21 PM ^
No worries. Delta has their own challenges, but I agree that operationally they typically do very well.
Not to go too in depth on it, but Southwest's unique routing structure does have historical roots. The airline started out of Dallas' Love Field (thus its stock ticker: LUV). Due to the Wright Amendment (messy and stupid Texas politics involved here), from the 1970s into the early 21st century they literally could neither (1) fly non-stops from Dallas Love Field to any state besides TX or one of the 4 states that border TX nor (2) fly a passenger from/to Dallas Love Field to somewhere unless their entire itinerary was on the same airplane.
E.g., Southwest couldn't offer Dallas-Los Angeles non-stop, but they could route the same planes on Dallas-El Paso-LA, Dallas-Albuquerque-LA, Dallas-OKC-LA (et cetera). This worked: the "connecting" cities weren't huge cities on their own but combine their traffic with the thru traffic and they filled planes.
Dallas Love was the only airport with these restrictions, but since that was the base of their operations, they disproportionately affected their entire routing philosophy.
Those regulations were all repealed over time It is time for them to evolve.
December 27th, 2022 at 4:10 PM ^
I assumed that the problems with Southwest were due to their route structure. We were supposed to go to Florida tomorrow on Southwest but had to cancel the trip due to a medical restriction I have a the moment which keeps me from flying. I just saw that the flight was cancelled.
December 27th, 2022 at 7:24 PM ^
I can't find any evidence supporting the assertion that the Wright Amendment would allow direct flights but not nonstop flights. In fact, everything that I can find asserts that the Wright Amendment disallowed through ticketing of a DAL passenger to a point beyond TX, NM, OK, AR, or LA. Instead, Dallas-based Southwest passengers would routinely do the "Texas Two-Step," purchasing, e.g, DAL-ELP or DAL-HOU and then a second ticket to their actual destination.
WN's reliance on through flights appears to be a way to make the economics of a point-to-point network effective. At one point, it was also advantageous in search engines, because the various GDSes would prioritize a direct flight over a connecting flight -- so you'd see "BUR-(PHX-BWI)-ISP" before you'd see, e.g., BUR-DEN-JFK with a transfer, even though the former had two hidden stops and the latter had one visible one. (They also don't have to collect PFCs at intermediate airports, but that's a minor win at best).
Keep in mind, WN was born in 1968, prior to deregulation and fairly early in the jet era. Direct flights used to be extremely common -- nearly every carrier offered them, since there wasn't really enough demand to support a hub-and-spoke model, the CAB didn't want a ton of competition anyway, and prior to the 707, aircraft didn't have the range to fly transcontinental routes without a stop. (Besides, at the ~225 mph top speeds of the B307 or DC-3, a nonstop LAX-IDL flight, were it possible, would have taken as long as TATL travel does today).
December 27th, 2022 at 2:15 PM ^
The company is using software that doesn't work terribly well, to say nothing about staffing shortages. Planes and crews seem to not be meshing terribly well.
My then-GF, now wife and I got screwed by the massive Southwest computer system crash in July 2016. She was flying out of DTW and I was flying out of BWI, and we were supposed to meet in Denver and then fly to San Francisco together. In the middle of the night before we were supposed to leave, SW's computer system crashed, and they ended up cancelling hundreds if not thousands of flights starting on our departure date. My flight out of BWI was cancelled, stranding me there, while the GF did make it out of DTW, but ended up stranded in Denver as the Denver to SFO flights were all cancelled. They wanted to rebook us on flights two to three days later, completely destroying our long weekend vacation, but thankfully we were able to make other arrangements (she got a United fight to SFO, I took the MARC/Metro combo from BWI to Reagan and caught a Delta flight that connected, ironically, through DTW), and we both got to San Fran later that day, before being able to take our original SW return flights.
But I could never understand how a computer outage could ground pretty much an entire airline's fleet. You cancel hundreds if not thousands of flights, costing millions of dollars, because you don't have a computer to tell you what to do? Pencil and paper that shit if nothing else. Any infrastructure system that can be completely derailed by a computer outage has serious issues.
I generally like SW (that's really the only issue I've had with them), and they, along with NW/Delta, have been one of the two best airlines I've flown, but these kind of issues are truly unacceptable...
December 27th, 2022 at 3:33 PM ^
Ah, the July '16 outage, I remember it well. Had a business trip to Cincinnati, but only got as far as Midway on the return leg. Ended up renting a car with an annoying colleague for the overnight drive back to Minneapolis. Haven't flown Southwest since. I hate them.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:14 PM ^
Yeah, our daughter's flight got cancelled yesterday. Speaking of, a friend is selling his 2 seats for the game because his flight got cancelled tomorrow. Face value at $545 in Section 125. If anyone is interested, post here and I will connect you with him.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:22 PM ^
Interested if they are still available
knipp.tim [at] gmail
December 27th, 2022 at 1:51 PM ^
Nevermind - thought it was an option but can't make it work
December 27th, 2022 at 1:15 PM ^
One of my daughters has been trying to visit for Christmas and has finally given up on Southwest and booked with Delta. Her flights kept getting canceled and this morning it looked like the earliest Southwest could get her here would be January 1st! She goes back to work on the 3rd.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:15 PM ^
Not only canceled, but you can't reschedule until after the new year!!!!!!!!
If you are away now, you have to rent a vehicle, IF one is available, to drive home.
Anyone flying into Phoenix for the Michigan game may now need to drive both ways.
Not good!!!
;-(
December 27th, 2022 at 1:52 PM ^
This is my same story. Southwest has stranded me in Denver with no ability to reschedule a flight until (they say via their scheduling website) late Saturday evening. I even checked into my planned 3:25 pm flight yesterday, exactly 24 hours in advance, and was confirmed with a boarding pass. Then last night at 11 pm received the fateful text message. I tried to connect with them via phone but hung up after staying on hold until midnight. They have given me virtually no suggestions about how to deal with this. It looks like every other airline that flies into/out of Denver has available seats so may schedule myself via one of them in order to return to Detroit.
If you have reservations on Southwest flying anywhere this week (especially Phoenix!), I would seriously question your ability to get there! One media report said that Southwest told them they planned to run only a third of their flights for a few days in order to get things back to "normal." I say this especially since my flight was originally confirmed about eight hours before getting the cancellation message. They don't seem to know what they are doing (though that may not be a fair comment).
December 27th, 2022 at 2:17 PM ^
I've flown Detroit to/from Phoenix many times and I've always gone with either Delta or American, never Southwest. And I've never had any issues, although this particular storm is quite disruptive.
December 27th, 2022 at 3:19 PM ^
Worst case, you can fly to SoCal and drive to Phoenix. Glendale is on the west side so it's an hour less to the stadium from LA than it is to Sky Harbor from LA. Also check connections to Tucson and Palm Spring, not just LAX/Orange County.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:17 PM ^
lol, so they weren't actually tracking where flight staff were, just predicting where they would be and manually updating if something changed. Now it's snowballed and they have no idea where anyone is and essentially have to turn the whole thing off and on again. Yikes.
That awful noise you hear is probably their entire IT department screaming "WE TOLD YOU SO!" after proposing expensive but necessary system upgrades for years.
December 27th, 2022 at 2:14 PM ^
Apparently they are trying to run the largest domestic airline in the country with a scheduling system that requires flight crew to call a phone number if their flight cancels so someone can manually enter the change into the system and then tell them over the phone where they are supposed to go next. I guess this system got overloaded to the point that Southwest flight attendants were posting screen shots of being on hold for 7 hours trying to report and get their updated schedule.
They will likely get things back to running by next week but actually fixing the cause of the problem is likely a one to two year project (not an IT guy but I suspect creating and implementing an integrated scheduling system for an airline operating 4,000 flights a day using various software systems from the 90's is not something quickly completed)
I have generally flown Southwest for the last decade but I think I am out. With no immediate fix available, the odds of the Southwest system collapsing during the next beg weather event are close to 100%. I guess its time to get my status back with fricken United....
December 27th, 2022 at 7:28 PM ^
No, you're not an IT guy. If you were an IT guy, you'd know that "one to two years" is extremely optimistic. 🤣 Unless they already have all of the underlying systems that they need, we're talking 3-5 years minimum. (Of course, business is going to get irate and insist it has to get done yesterday, so except them to roll something almost entirely non-functional, but extremely expensive, out there within your 2-year timeframe).
December 27th, 2022 at 3:55 PM ^
Don't blame the IT folks for this failure. Blame the company leadership that has consistently under-invested in technology for decades. And BTW, there are many other companies in this and other industries that are similarly rolling the dice. You cannot save your way to profitability in the long run. Invest, evolve, or die.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:19 PM ^
The guy who caught shade in another thread for planning a 12 hour drive to Phoenix from San Francisco is looking plenty smart now.
December 27th, 2022 at 3:30 PM ^
That is 12 good podcasts and a couple books on tape. I've done similar west coast trips, not horrible.
December 27th, 2022 at 5:54 PM ^
Righto. Car trips on the West Coast are usually a pleasure once you're outside the big, crowded cities.
December 27th, 2022 at 5:53 PM ^
No kidding. I'd have driven from 12 out in the first place but that's just me as I've got too much Chevy Chase in me.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:20 PM ^
It is truly astounding that an operation with logistics as complicated as a major airline can (apparently) be so incredibly deficient in their IT infrastructure.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:56 PM ^
Wouldn't want to be a Southwest shareholder right now! This is undoubtedly the most obvious tip of the management problem iceberg there.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:21 PM ^
Thank you for posting. It's important to spread the word. This company is a galactic-level disgrace.
My mother received a 5am text message that her 12/28 flight from Denver was canceled. Next available flight offered is 12/31.
I wrote off SW 2 years ago. IMO, it's the worst United States based company in existence. I hope they shut down, sell off their assets, and allow a real competitor to take over. No one should ever be a Southwest customer. Caveat emptor.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:59 PM ^
It's hard to disagree after being a victim myself. On the other hand, Southwest is a critical part of US transportation and I would hope they will figure all of this out very quickly, even though part of the answer will be a long-term investment in their operations. Southwest leaving the map, via liquidation or merger, would just make fewer flight options available and hike the flight costs for all the remaining options. Justified thinking anyway!
December 27th, 2022 at 2:26 PM ^
Screw Southwest with a million burning suns. If they were gone, I reject the notion that there would be less flights, especially in the long run. The airline industry existed before Southwest massively increased their market share, and the airline industry will be fine when they are hopefully gone.
It's a complete myth that Southwest is a discount airline. United/American/Delta routinely have better prices. Almost all US airlines allow free changes post-Covid. Southwest bakes their "no bag fee discount" into their prices; plus, most airlines allow you to have free bags and free seat selections once you hit even the lowest level status.
The "cattle call" seating process for Southwest sucks!!! To avoid it, you have to pay $25/seat, which is so petty. It's a garbage, outdated model. It needs to die.
The only people that defend Southwest are the dopes that foolishly pushed their chips into getting A-list or companion status. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're fooling no one. People trying to defend Southwest are like pyramid scheme suckers that are trying to drag others down into the pit with them.
December 27th, 2022 at 10:10 PM ^
It's less about Southwest being a discount airline, and more that consolidation would lead to higher prices generally (as it has in the last 25 years). Competition keeps prices down across the industry.
December 27th, 2022 at 3:08 PM ^
At least your mother got a text message. We got nothing. Took me three hours on the website to rebook, and we still aren't sure my kid will be going on her trip.
I can't believe that in the days of AWS, Azure, and other cloud providers, their network didn't scale up. It's IT malpractice.
December 27th, 2022 at 3:21 PM ^
I'm sorry to hear. I agree wholeheartedly it's malpractice, and then some. I hope the USDOT and USAGO fully investigate. I 100% support tax dollars going to this purpose. Airline travel is integral to our country's economy. Malfeasance on this level hurts everyone.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:25 PM ^
Well... we'll see Friday morning if I have 2 tickets for sale or not. Not worth it to try to rebook with another airline since I got these for a good price and using the companion pass for one ticket.
December 27th, 2022 at 2:02 PM ^
Sorry, JRell. Hope as long as you want but you know the 5P saying, so start figuring it out now if you really want to go! You will probably be required to fly into another airport and drive there.
December 27th, 2022 at 1:45 PM ^
Yeah...my kid and I flew home to Indiana and were supposed to fly back to Phoenix on 12/24. that flight got cancelled so they put me on a flight on 12/26. Then that flight got cancelled too so they put me on the next available flight on 12/31. Thankfully my parents are happy to have me and my kiddo here so they don't mind that we'll be hanging around for a few more days. A lot of other folks aren't so lucky so I'm counting my blessings and being patient.
December 27th, 2022 at 2:03 PM ^
The big winner here is American. Everyone is so busy talking about the Southwest implosion that somehow there has been no coverage of the DFW luggage meltdown. Near as I can tell, about half of the luggage that was supposed to get loaded onto planes on 12/22 and 12/23 stayed in DFW. Our flight got into DTW just after midnight with maybe a quarter of the luggage onboard. Waited in line for three hours to provide a delivery address. Our bags finally arrived this morning, 4 days later.
December 27th, 2022 at 2:03 PM ^
I have been a loyal Southwest customer for 10+ years. In the past week:
1. They cancelled the first leg of my holiday flight. I managed to reschedule it with moderate inconvenience
2. They lost my bag. I managed to retrieve it with quite a lot of inconvenience—and I’m very lucky at that
3. They cancelled my return 12/28 flight and are not offering another flight until 12/31 at 5 pm.
I will never fly Southwest again if I can avoid it.