[ad_1]
Everyone knows air travel is hard. However vacation air journey is in one other league. With sky-high airfares, canceled flights, missed connections, impossibly lengthy airport safety traces, and vacationers pushed to the brink of madness, it’s a time of yr when in any other case peculiar home flights can flip into the seventh circle of hell. But, in an epic “maintain my beer” transfer, Southwest Airways in some way managed to make all of it even worse this yr. Amid final week’s “generational” snowstorm, hundreds of Southwest flight cancellations left numerous vacationers stranded throughout the nation. Now, everybody from passengers to flight attendants to Pete Buttigieg (the Transportation Secretary) needs solutions.
The numbers are staggering. In keeping with one CNN article yesterday, Southwest canceled roughly 15,750 flights this Christmas season — particularly, since December 22, when many components of the U.S. started experiencing excessive winter climate. The cancellations represented a whopping 62% of all the airline’s flights, in comparison with different main carriers like JetBlue, United, American, and Delta, who reported anyplace between zero and a pair of%. On Thursday, 98% of all grounded flights in your complete nation belonged to Southwest. The sheer variety of Southwest flight cancellations was so egregious, in truth, that the U.S. Division of Transportation is probing the carrier to search out out precisely what went flawed.
In current days, we’ve since discovered the actual motive for the collapse: Outdated know-how. The airline has relied on decades-old software program for employees scheduling — an issue that might have simply been prevented. Southwest’s personal flight attendant union has been sounding the alarm bell for years. The Washington Post detailed the contents of an inner memo, which famous that the corporate’s dated pc techniques left Southwest susceptible. It’s a system that was already working properly past its limits, and this current winter storm lastly pushed it to the breaking level. One native chapter of the Transport Employees Union known as the meltdown “unavoidable.” The Southwest cancellations so overwhelmed the corporate’s managers that many had been left scrambling to unravel it with old-school pen and paper.
After almost per week of chaos, it appears all these Southwest cancellations are lastly beginning to subside. As of this morning, The New York Times reported just a few dozen cancellations. It’s nice information for anybody planning to journey over the New Yr’s vacation, nevertheless it appears the airline will not be out of the woods but.
One final word: When you had been affected by this current avalanche of Southwest flight cancellations (or any airline cancellation in any respect), it’s necessary to know your rights. Most significantly: You can demand a cash refund and not just a voucher.
Editors’ Suggestions
[ad_2]
Source_link
