Southwest Airlines Travel Nightmare Over?

Hallelujah!! The 2022 Southwest Airlines travel nightmare appears to have (finally) come to an end!

Travel :
While many of us spent the last weeks of December celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa with family and friends, others spent days stuck inside airports across the country, sleeping on floors and benches (without the airline providing hotel or food vouchers), with no choice but to eat expensive airport food thanks to Southwest Airlines. The reason? Severe winter weather, overbooked flights, and a total and complete meltdown of the airline’s scheduling system prompted the low-cost carrier to cancel thousands of flights — creating a domino effect that forced holiday travelers to totally miss time with their loved ones and instead, spend it stuck with strangers inside overcrowded airports.

All across America, the site at airport check-in counters and boarding gates was beyond believable. Wall-to-wall angry passengers were involuntarily stuck shoulder-to-shoulder next to strangers as they fought cue lines to get answers and remedies for their butchered travel plans. Some airports were so blanketed with stranded travelers that the scene resembled that of a hurricane shelter full of displaced residents.

As if that wasn’t enough, baggage areas were overcome with a sea of stranded pieces of luggage that stretched as far as the naked eye could see. After all, if thousands of passengers were stuck, then thousands upon thousands of bags were stuck, too.

To make matters, worse, the problem with Southwest trickled down to other airlines, prompting a historic modern-day travel armageddon of epic proportions.

Now, weary travelers are second-guessing if the low airfares and 2 free bags with Southwest Airlines are worth gambling on ever again.

On Wednesday at Chicago Midway International Airport, James Tholen dug through a football field worth of luggage looking for his bags (that had been missing for 4 days). By that point, he had already given up on expecting the airline to find him a replacement flight and opted to take a 2-day long drive home to Salt Lake City instead.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing here — this is ridiculous,” Mr. Tholen said. “Nobody can tell us where our bags are.”

At Tampa International Airport, Brittany Loubier-Vervisch whittled her waiting time away by voluntarily going through stranded luggage and texting the bags’ owners to alert them to the whereabouts of their prized possessions.

“My flight was delayed 8 times over 21 hours and caused such an uproar, police were called to the gate.”

– Suneil Kamath

Other would-be passengers made deals with their fellow travelers to chip in on renting cars and sharing the driving duties to get to where they needed to be.

“We are past the point where they could say that this is a weather-driven issue,” US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said during an appearance last Wednesday on GOOD MORNING AMERICA. “What this indicates is a system failure, and they need to make sure that these stranded passengers get to where they need to go and that they are provided adequate compensation,” he added while promising that the airline will face hefty fines for its failures.

Soon thereafter, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan apologized to customers and warned that the “giant puzzle” of staffing could take days to solve.

“Our plan for the next few days is to fly a reduced schedule and reposition our people and planes,” Mr. Jordan said. “We’re making headway, and we’re optimistic to be back on track before next week.”

Although operations appeared back to normal heading into the new year, the news couldn’t replace the memories travelers lost by being stranded during the holidays.

According to FlightAware, Southwest Airlines canceled nearly 11,000 flights over an approximate 8-day period. However, by Friday, only 43 flights were canceled, signaling the beginning of the end to the horrific travel nightmare.

OK WASSUP! covers Travel News:
Southwest Airlines travel nightmare over?