And they say they’ve been raising concerns for years. While Southwest grew from a Texas-based discount airline operating three planes into one of the nation’s largest, union officials representing Southwest workers say the company did not keep pace with technology changes. I mean, the bags are free,” Williams said.Īsk Southwest Airline employees about their company’s technology. Winston Williams, standing near Hister, said he intends to still use the airline in the future. So, maybe you know, the efforts to redeem themselves are working.” 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. Unfortunately, Southwest took the brunt of this year’s travel unfortunate situation,” Roderic Hister told CNN. This is flight travel, everyone’s trying to get everywhere at the same time. Several people at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport spoke to CNN’s Nick Valencia on Thursday about their travel experiences with Southwest this holiday season. Some passengers were taking all of this in stride and showed some sympathy for Southwest. What should I do if my flight has been canceled or delayed? “You’ve got a company here that’s got a lot of cleaning up to do,” he said. His remarks came as Buttigieg made his own scathing assessment Southwest’s troubles, calling the situation a complete “meltdown.” But for now, we’re focused on restoring the reliability and level of customer experience we expect of ourselves, and you expect of us.” “We’re continuing to work to make this up to you, and you’ll continue to hear about that soon. “My personal apology is the first step of making things right after many plans changed and experiences fell short of your expectations of us,” Green said in a video. The airline’s chief commercial officer, Ryan Green, offered his regrets Thursday over the collapse of services, promising to rebuild customer relations that have sunk to rock bottom. The airline has also begun notifying its customers that it expects to fly a “full schedule” on Friday.Īn email to a passenger scheduled to fly Southwest on Friday read: “While we have recently experienced operational challenges, we expect to resume a full schedule of flights with minimal disruptions on your day of travel.” That appears to back up Southwest’s claim that normal services would be more or less resumed on Friday. “I’m looking to make sure they actually do that, and if they don’t, we are in a position to levy tens of thousands of dollars per violation per passenger in fines.”įriday’s cancellation list is a lot shorterįlightAware, the flight tracking service, showed that only 39 Southwest Friday flights have been canceled as of 11:40 p.m. “The airline said to me that they were going to go above and beyond what’s required of them,” Buttigieg said Thursday in an interview with NBC News. “It would be an unfair and deceptive practice not to fulfill this commitment to passengers,” Buttigieg wrote, specifically referring to alternative travel reimbursements. The penalties include the ability to levy fines. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote in a letter to Jordan that officials will take action against the airline if it does not follow through on promises to reimburse passengers for alternative transportation costs, as well as provide meals, hotels, refunds and baggage reunification. The DOT formally warned Southwest on Thursday that it will face consequences if it fails to make right by stranded and inconvenienced passengers. And the Department of Transportation is still taking a firm line with Southwest. However, that’s still not mollifying questions about how the airline’s systems could allow things to go so wrong and demands they not happen again. “We’ve set up a page at /traveldisruption for customers to submit refund and reimbursement requests for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation as well as to connect customers to their baggage.” “We know even our deepest apologies – to our customers, to our employees, and to all affected through this disruption – only go so far,” the statement read. Thursday’s statement came with more contrition from the airline. “We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made to realign crew, their schedules, and our fleet,” it said. In a statement released Thursday – following another bruising day in which a further 2,362 flights were canceled – Southwest said it hoped for minimal disruptions over the New Year’s weekend. Southwest Airlines says it’s set up to resume normal schedules on Friday after a tumultuous eight days that left hundreds of thousands of passengers delayed or stranded and prompted its executives to make apologies to the riding public and government officials.
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