An arctic blast, snow and an intensifying winter storm marred the Los Angeles, Chicago, and Newark airports during the holiday season
An arctic blast and a rapidly intensifying winter storm have come at an unfortunate time for travelers trying to join family and friends for the holidays.
By Thursday afternoon, there were still few signs of relief: More than 2,300 Southwest flights had been canceled, according to airline tracker FlightAware. Frontier had 19 flights that were dropped from its schedule that day, compared to the second-most canceled by a US airline.
Airports in Chicago and Denver saw the bulk of cancellations and delays on Thursday. The O’Hare International Airport experienced delays of almost three hours due to snow and ice.
The temperature dropped from 9 degrees to 13 degrees by 5 p.m. local time. The weather service reported snow and freezing fog.
The FAA said aircraft departing from Dallas Love, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver and Minneapolis airports must have a spraying of de-icing fluid.
“Flight activity at #LaGuardiaAirport may be disrupted by heavy rain and strong winds later today and Friday. Travelers are advised to confirm their flight status with their airline before going to the airport. John F. Kennedy and Newark Airport had similar notices.
For those whose flights are still scheduled to fly, the Transportation Security Administration is recommending that passengers arrive at the airport earlier than usual.
All airports expect to be more crowded this holiday season than they have been in the past several years, according to the federal security director at Reagan National Airport. We expect to see some of our busiest days, like yesterday and today, as well as Friday, the day before the New Year’s holiday.
Greyhound is cancelling or disrupting intercity bus services in the Northeastern United States due to winter weather. An alert from Chicago on Thursday
Maria Ihekwaba, who was traveling from Chicago to Clear Lake, Iowa, with her granddaughter on Thursday morning, told CNN she was trying to depart as soon as possible.
A traveler, from San Diego, told CNN that she was visiting her sister and brother-in-law, but cut the trip short as she did not want to get caught in the weather.
She said that she was concerned because San Diego doesn’t get snowstorms. I prefer that it not be trapped in the airport for long periods of time.
Greyhound, the largest provider of intercity bus service, issued a service alert on Monday stating that it will be canceled or disrupted in the northeastern United States due to winter weather. Buffalo, Cleveland and Syracuse are some of the affected cities.
The company has posted an alert here, in which it states nearly 20 cities are impacted. It advised passengers to check bustracker.greyhound.com for the latest information about specific journeys.
• Charleston, West Virginia• Chicago• Cleveland• Dallas• Danville, Illinois• Davenport, Iowa• Denver• Detroit• Indianapolis• Kansas City• Minneapolis• St. Louis• Wichita, Kansas
Flight cancellations and airline strategies during the recent Buffalo-Bulkport airport closure due to deicing: Scott Phillips’s Cheap Flights
“Amtrak will waive additional charges for customers looking to change their reservation during the modified schedule by calling our reservation center at 1-800-USA-RAIL.”
— In hard-hit western New York, Buffalo International Airport said in its most recent tweet that it does not plan to resume passenger flights before 11 a.m. ET Wednesday, pushing back the expected reopening by another 24 hours later than previously anticipated.
The Federal Aviation Administration posted a ground stop on Friday morning for flights to and from Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, as well as Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, due to deicing.
The airlines have allowed passengers to rebook during the winter at no cost. Here, you’ll find links to airline waivers and more air travel strategies.
With much of the United States still reeling from a nearly weeklong winter storm , flight cancellations and delays and other transportation challenges continued to pile up on Christmas Day.
“We hear about how travel volume is still down, 5 or 10 percent, but what many folks might not have realized is that the number of flights in the sky is actually down more like 15 or 20 percent,” Scott Keyes of Scott’s Cheap Flights told CNN.
He said that he could have been stuck if he made it to the airport. “They totally shut down transit, so I’m not sure how I would’ve left the airport,” Phillips said.
He says he feels disappointment, but isn’t surprised. I was hoping to get in before the rain came and I knew the weather was going to be bad.
He will make the best of his time in Seattle, as he is planning to attend his friend’s holiday party, even though he wouldn’t have made it.
The Denver International Supersonic Storm and its Consequences for Southwest Airlines, an Empirical Analysis, and the Denver Airport Correspondence
Denver International was keeping a sense of humor during the stressful event, posting a tweet of what appeared to be an airport worker playing “Jingle Bells” on a fiddle.
The storm is abating in parts of the West. The temperature at Denver International was well above freezing at 1 pm.
This megablast of winter weather across the eastern two-thirds of the nation is forecast to slowly moderate into the last week of the year. As of 3 p.m. ET, there were still almost 200 preemptive cancellations for Monday.
Amtrak’s last service alert was posted Friday. It said then the severe weather “has caused Amtrak to make several service and cancellations from now through Sunday, December 25.”
Southwest’s schedule includes shorter flights with tighter turnaround times, which caused some of the problems during the storm. Southwest is known for its “point to point” business model, and it distinguishes itself in that it lets passengers travel directly between smaller markets.
Kyle Potter, executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, called it an incredibly complex task for an airline with a network as vast as Southwest’s to coordinate staffing and scheduling, particularly after weather delays.
“This is really as bad as it gets for an airline,” Potter said. “We’ve seen this again and again over the course of the last year or so, when airlines really just struggle especially after a storm, but there’s pretty clear skies across the country.”
Long lines of travelers attempting to rebook or make connections were witnessed at Southwest ticket counters at multiple US airports on Tuesday, while huge piles of unclaimed bags continued to grow as passengers struggled to reclaim their luggage in airports including Chicago’s Midway International, Harry Reid in Las Vegas and William P. Hobby Airport in Houston.
“I’m okay with these travel situations and fly on by myself when it’s just me, but when my one-year-old has to suffer through it because of ineptitude and mismanagement, that becomes personal,” Southwest passenger Joshua Caudle, who said he was unsure when they would be able to leave Denver, said on Denver7 News. “I’m never going to do this with that company again.”
A passenger who was trying to fly from Missouri to Denver says that she missed Christmas with her family because of delays and canceled flights at the Kansas City International Airport. Despite her being grounded, her luggage was sent to Denver without her, she wrote on Twitter.
Thousands of Delta pilots picketed at major airports this summer, calling for higher pay and highlighting staff concerns as passengers faced flight cancellations during the Fourth of July holiday rush. Last month, Delta pilots voted to authorize a strike after negotiations for a new contract were paused.
What Happens When the Southwest Airlines Flights Go Out Of Business: Jay McVay, President of Scott’s Cheap Flights, Inc
Air travelers in the US hoping for clear skies on Tuesday will only have a few more days to be patient and not fly with Southwest Airlines.
Jordan told the Wall Street Journal the company plans to operate just over 34% of its schedule over the next few days in order to give themselves the ability to get into the right positions.
“We had a tough day today. In all likelihood we’ll have another tough day tomorrow as we work our way out of this,” Jordan said in an interview Monday evening with WSJ.com.
The frustrated passengers in line at the Southwest ticket counter were talked to by CNN’s Carlos Suarez.
Customers couldn’t speak to a representative because calls made by CNN didn’t go through. Southwest told CNN they are fully staffed to answer calls.
If you’re left out in the cold and can’t get in touch with a customer service agent, the founder of Scott’s cheap flights suggests getting in touch with an international number.
“The main hotline for US airlines will be clogged with other passengers getting rebooked. If you want to get in touch with an agent quickly, you have to call any of the airline’s international offices.
“As the storm continued to sweep across the country it continued to impact many of our larger stations and so the cancellations just compiled one after another to 100 to 150 to 1,000,” Jay McVay said in a press conference at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport on Monday night.
They don’t have the normal hub like the other airlines. We fly a network that can put our crews in the wrong places.
McVay says the company’s first priority is safety. He stated that they wanted to make sure that they were able to carry out these flights safely and that their flight crews had enough time to do it.
He said that they will do everything they can to get the people home as soon as possible, which includes hotels, Ride Assistance, vans and rental cars.
If you’ve already left, keep your receipts, take care of yourself, and do what you need to do for your family,” McVay said. “We will make sure they are taken care of, that is not a question.”
The Story of Southwest Airlines’ Communications Meltdowns: A Brief Rejoinder to Southwest Airlines Administrator David Santoro and the Managing Director of TWU Local 556
The USDOT issued a statement on Monday’s massive flight cancellations by Southwest Airlines, saying that the agency is concerned.
Captain Mike Santoro, the vice president of Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told CNN that the union was tired of apologizing for Southwest. Our hearts go out to all of the passengers.”
He told CNN that they had been having the issues for the last 20 months. “We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”
“It’s phones, it’s computers, it’s processing power, it’s the programs used to connect us to airplanes – that’s where the problem lies, and it’s systemic throughout the whole airline,” he said.
According to the President of TWU Local 556, the phone system is not working for the company. “They’re just not manned with enough manpower in order to give the scheduling changes to flight attendants, and that’s created a ripple effect that is creating chaos throughout the nation.”
Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, in a message to employees obtained by CNN, acknowledged many of Murray’s concerns, and promised the company will invest in better systems.
Jordan told employees that part of their plight is a lack of tools. The need to do that has been discussed an awful lot.
Gary Kelly, the company’s CEO at the time, said on the call that the company had made changes to prevent a similar mess in the future.
“We have reined in our capacity plans to adjust to the current staffing environment, and our ontime performance has improved, accordingly,” said Kelly on October 21. “We are aggressively hiring to a goal of approximately 5,000 new employees by the end of this year, and we are currently more than halfway toward that goal.”
Flight cancellations for a Southwest passenger: The case for the late-night departure date of McClain and the long-term ill-preparedness of his family
The airline said in a statement Monday that it will fly about one-third of its schedule for the next several days as it continues to recover its operations.
Congress was interested in that failure. The causes of these disruptions and their impact to customers will be looked at by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Taylor McClain, a Southwest passenger, had his flight from Salt Lake City to Chicago canceled last Thursday. He rebooked for a 3 p.m. that didn’t end up departing until 9 p.m.
McClain’s return to Utah has been even more harrowing. He was scheduled to leave Chicago late Monday. It was not going to happen. Now, the soonest he’s been able to reschedule is for Thursday night.
At least he’s lucky to be with his parents, but “I will burn multiple days of unplanned vacation and absorb four days worth of extra kennel fees for the dog I can’t get back to,” he says.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/27/1145616523/southwest-airlines-flight-cancellations-2022
An airline passenger’s phone call from Denver, and the airline says it will be shut down by the time it gets canceled,” says Helane Becker
Helane Becker, an aviation analyst with Cowen, an investment bank and financial services company, says Southwest needs to bring those tools, in the form of internal software systems, up to date.
The vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association told CNN that the airline does not have a normal hub. “We fly a point-to-point network, which can put our crews in the wrong places, without airplanes.”
With Southwest, however, “their pilots take off in the morning from one city, then they fly to two, three, four, five, six other cities. A flight crew can change anywhere in there, and then it goes one or two more legs across the country and spends the night.
As a result, “when you get a weather situation like this, you have all sorts of pilots and flight attendants that can no longer get to where they need to be, because quite often flight crews are not based at the same city or they don’t live at the same city that they’re based out of,” she says. “So when there’s bad weather, everything tends to get out of position.”
One of the passengers is now living with his wife and two kids in Denver. The family was in New York City for a wedding anniversary and his daughter’s birthday.
The family was going to go home on Christmas Eve. Just before they departed for the airport, Lenz checked his phone app “to make sure everything was good.”
It wasn’t good. The flight was called off. He didn’t reach an agent, so he was on the phone for hours. He used the app on his phone to rebook. He finally reached an agent on Monday. “Do you believe this will be solved by the time we leave?” he asked.
The agent reassured him, and even moved the flight to the 27th. “Then everything got canceled, including my Tuesday flight,” he says.
The Southwest Airlines Flavor Problem Revisited: Why Airlines are Faking and What Happens If You Can’t Get There Early & Them Back
The family rent a car and drive back to Denver, taking 26 hours. “There’s a place about halfway through in Illinois that’s 13 hours from here and 13 hours from from Denver. So our goal is to take a quick breather at the hotel and then pick it up again so we can be there Thursday night,” Lenz says.
As badly as things have gone for both Southwest and its customers, the company has owned up to its problems, says Becker. “From a PR perspective, they’re out in front,” she says. They’re buying food for people and putting them in hotel rooms. They’re doing their best to get you where you need to go. They’re paying you back. They are buying tickets on other airlines.
But industry analyst Potter says the airlines’ failures mean customers end up paying the price. And that will continue as long as the carriers are allowed to “keep running these razor thin margins where mass delays and cancellations [are] just a storm or a mechanics strike or an IT software issue away.”
Three of the state’s airports – Dallas-Fort Worth International (DFW), Dallas Love Field (DAL) and Austin Bergstrom International (AUS) – are experiencing significant disruption, according to FlightAware, with Dallas Fort-Worth seeing the bulk of cancellations. As of 11 a.m. ET, about 700 flights to or from DFW were canceled.
Buttigieg says he spoke directly to Southwest CEO Bob Jordan on Tuesday about the thousands of flights that have been canceled this week with no immediate indication of when passengers can rebook.
“I’ll be sorry I’m sorry, but I will make sure I’ll take care of my family,” Jones, a spokesperson told CNN
“We’re continuing to work to make this up to you, and you’ll continue to hear about that soon. But for now, we’re focused on restoring the reliability and level of customer experience we expect of ourselves, and you expect of us.”
Passenger Trisha Jones told CNN at the airport in Atlanta that she and her partner had been traveling for five days, trying to get home to Wichita, Kansas, after disembarking from a cruise at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“We were fortunate, because we were in Fort Lauderdale — my family lives in the Tampa bay area so we were able to rent a car to go see my family for Christmas,” Jones said. We’ve seen many families who are sleeping on the floor, and it just breaks my heart.
“We’ve set up a page at Southwest.com/traveldisruption for customers to submit refund and reimbursement requests for meals, hotel and alternate transportation; as well as to connect customers to their baggage.”
In a statement on Tuesday, the Democratic senators said that they want Southwest to give ” significant monetary compensation” to customers whose holidays have been ruined.
“While all of the other parts of the aviation system have been moving toward recovery and getting better each day, it’s actually been moving the opposite direction with this airline,” said Buttigieg.
While Jordan acknowledged problems with the company response, the statement suggested that he did not foresee massive changes to Southwest’s procedures in response to the mass cancellations.
We need to double down on our plans to upgrade the systems so that we never have to deal with this in the future.
“Every airline in the country is jam-packed right now, so your odds of even finding a seat — let alone at an even halfway decent price — get smaller by the hour,” Potter said.
“Travelers in the thick of this should be sure to save all their receipts: other flights, a rental car, nights at the hotel, meals, anything,” Potter said.
The Impact of Southwest Airlines on Customers and Employees: A Response to a CNN Report on Scheduling and Reappearance of Seating Caps
The company has faced criticism for its outdated scheduling software and communications systems, and the impact that has — not just on passengers but also its employees.
The price caps vary by location in areas that have been affected by the cancellation of flights. Southwest did not reply to CNN’s request.
One traveler posted a screenshot showing flights from San Diego to Orlando with American, Delta and United fares that cost more than $2,000. The passenger was trying to rebook a flight.
Making the travel nightmare worse, Southwest has a policy of not rebooking customers on rival airlines. Southwest Airlines agents can’t rebook stranded passengers on other airlines because it doesn’t have inter line agreements with other airlines.
“After days of trying to operate as much of our full schedule across the busy holiday weekend, we reached a decision point to significantly reduce our flying to catch up,” he said.
“It would be an unfair and deceptive practice not to fulfill this commitment to passengers,” Buttigieg wrote, specifically referring to alternative travel reimbursements.
“We expect them to treat passengers well and make sure they pay for things like hotels, ground travel expenses, meals, and of course, refunds,” Buttigieg said.
The Southwest Airlines Cancellation Capacity Increased by $1.2$ TeV in the First Three Months of 2018.8$Tues, as reported by CNN
Employees were free to use their own devices. […] They weren’t given the tools to do their jobs, nor were they given the leadership to answer questions and be able to provide solutions,” he told NPR’s Morning Edition.
The airline industry dislikes regulations because they put the cost burden on the customer. Murray thinks Southwest is better suited to decide what needs to change than the DOT.
Congress is also watching whether the airline will compensate customers. The Senate Commerce Committee will launch an investigation, its chair said on Tuesday.
Passengers who saw their flight canceled are entitled to a cash refunds for the full amount and any additional purchases, as long as they did not purchase more than one item.
Customers can choose to rebook or travel without fees for the entire month of January. But for those looking to get a cash payment, the company has opened a special self-service portal for processing.
The dire situation, which has exasperated passengers and caught the eye of government regulators, has magnified this week as other major airlines recovered from the extreme cold, ice and snow that gripped much of the United States over the holiday weekend.
The company reduced its capacity by two thirds on Thursday, according to a review of flight data by CNN.
The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics tracks the airlines performance, and they show that the airline cancellation rate has gone up in the last few years.
The bureau has only released data for 2022 through September. To ensure a fair comparison, CNN only analyzed the carrier’s data from January to September in previous years.
Loss of Southwest Airlines from the Decay of the Watterson Scheduling Problem and the Company’s Stock Price Bounce During the December 24th Mass Cancellation
People travelling between small cities must change planes if they choose to fly from smaller markets to hubs. The operational advantage of that model is how fast crews and planes are able to get out of the hub.
Southwest had a delicate house of cards that could quickly fall when the company encountered a problem, due to manual scheduling.
Watterson said they would make great progress and then some other disruption would happen, which would ruin their work. We spent a lot of time getting close to finishing the problem, and then we had to reset it.
Wall Street expressed concern that the debacle could cost Southwest. The company’s stock price lost $2 billion in value over the course of a week. The airline’s stock price bounced back nearly 3% Thursday, but remains down about 9% since the closing price on December 23, just before the mass cancellations.
“We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made to realign Crew, their schedules, and our fleet,” the company said in a statement. “With another holiday weekend full of important connections for our valued Customers and Employees, we are eager to return to a state of normalcy.”
What Does Southwest Have to Offer? A Reply to Green’s Misleading’ Concern about Southwest’s Collapse of Services’
The family had packed their winter coats and warm-weather clothes when they arrived in Colorado, but it was a minus 3 degree day in Denver. When they returned to Memphis, they had to queue up with many others to check out their luggage because it turned out their bags had been in Denver the whole time.
She thought she’d never see her bags again because of how chaotic this week has been. She was surprised when the luggage arrived at her door Wednesday night.
Southwest apologized late Wednesday and again Thursday, as well as saying passengers can apply for baggage returns, flight refunds and travel expenses online.
She says that she had to remove him from her plane when he was trying to go home to see his family because he was at the airport.
The president of the Transport Workers Union’s Local 555 said on Wednesday that Southwest employees were getting sick and having to work 16- or 18-hour shifts during the holiday season.
Can Southwest now deliver? The picture will become increasingly clearer as regular air traffic picks up Friday morning.
If those planes are back up in the air and the mounds of stacked-up luggage are reduced, it certainly would be a relief for passengers — and for the company. It’s got a mark on its back.
The airline’s chief commercial officer, Ryan Green, has offered his regrets over the collapse of services, promising to rebuild customer relations that have sunk to rock bottom.
“My apology is the first step of getting things right after plans changed and experiences fell short of expectations,” Green said in the video.
His remarks, which follow earlier apologies from airline CEO Jordan, came as Buttigieg made his own scathing assessment Southwest’s troubles, calling the situation a complete “meltdown.”
When asked what he thought about the lack of lines at the Southwest counters at the airport, Hister said: “Maybe speaks to the improvements that they’re trying to make, because there’s not long lines, people aren’t here complaining. The attempts to redeem themselves are working.
In the future, Williams said he intends to use the airline. I like Southwest. I mean, the bags are free,” Williams said.
The Broken Trust between Southwest Airlines and CNN: A Critical Analysis of the Trump Administrative Seasons Southwest Airlines’ Scheduling System
They and the airline describe an internal process that involves multiple departments manually realigning the airline’s schedule, which works for the vast majority of the time.
Southwest’s crew scheduling system tool leaves most of the work of rebuilding that delicate network to be done manually when something goes wrong.
Elaine Chao, who was secretary of transportation during the Trump administration, called the breakdown of Southwest Airlines a failure of unbelievable proportions.
She told CNN that the situation was a perfect storm of issues with the company. She said it would take a long time for them to rebuild trust.
He said Southwest agreed to honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel and alternate transportation. I would avoid expensive hotels and restaurants while Southwest is not clear on how much they will reimburse. If you’re stuck at a airport you can find nearby hotels on the internet.
“Do a few Google searches such as ‘free things to do near me.’ I wouldn’t book an expensive trip if Southwest wasn’t going to reimburse tours or other paid activities.
A Joint Flight Delay and All-Sky Scenario for the Dallas Love Field Airfields in the Dallas-Fort Worth Region
A publicly available airspace status notice showed flight delays early Monday afternoon averaging nearly three hours with a maximum delay up to six hours.
Visibility is at or below a quarter of a mile. The main reason for the delays and cancellation is the freezing fog and low visibility.
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The airline’s operations went into a tail spin during the holidays and it had to give a winter weather waivers to many airports in Texas and Oklahoma. The waiver applies to travel from January 30 to February 1.
The travel period from January 29 to February 2 was covered by the waiver on Sunday. American had canceled about 115 US flights by 1 p.m. ET Monday.
Dallas Love Field tweeted on Monday that its team “stands ready to treat and clear surfaces to allow for safe operations.” DFW is also preparing for bad weather.
The weather will also make for treacherous road conditions. Up to a half an inch of ice or sleet is possible in parts of Texas, the National Weather Service warns. The Weather Prediction Center said that ice is likely to accumulate in at least 15 states.
“I encourage Arkansans who are experiencing winter weather to avoid travel if possible and heed the warnings of local officials,” Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted on Monday.
A winter storm warning is in effect for a portion of Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area.