BREAKING UPDATE: After nearly a week of canceling most of its flights, Southwest Airlines anticipates “minimal disruptions” on Friday.
The airline said it is investing in new solutions to manage wide-scale disruptions. The announcement comes after the airline canceled over 60% of its flights on Thursday, according to FlightAware.
“We are encouraged by the progress we've made to realign Crew, their schedules, and our fleet. With another holiday weekend full of important connections for our valued Customers and Employees, we are eager to return to a state of normalcy,” the airline wrote on Thursday. READ MORE HERE.
MILWAUKEE — After Southwest’s thousands of flight cancellations over the last week, fears over whether this could happen again in the near future loom.
“It was a perfect storm of operational issues, staff being displaced as well as the after-effects of weather. And now, Southwest is unfortunately having to dig themselves out of this really just terrible circumstance,” said Katy Nastro, Scott’s Cheap Flights.
Travel expert Katy Nastro says the airline’s failures didn’t stem from one place.
“It's come to light that there were internal operations systems that just broke under the strain of having to get all these people re-booked, as well as their crew. A lot of their crew and staff were displaced all across the country,” said Nastro.
Nastro says Southwest operates on a point-to-point system versus the “hub and spoke model” like a lot of other airlines.
This means flights have to go to a central hub, like a major city, and there's fewer hubs across the country versus how many points where Southwest can operate.
Nastro says the recent failure may push other carriers to re-evaluate how they run things to avoid their own mess in the future.
“I think inter-line agreements will definitely be a part of the conversation moving forward, and this could be a good thing for travelers in the next year, where, if there ever, God forbid should be a scenario, such as this, which we hope, knock on wood won't happen,” said Nastro.
Nastro understands that while there may be some apprehension from travelers on flying at all in the future, she says that in these circumstances, passengers do have more power than they might think.
“You are entitled under Federal law, to a full cash refund. You are entitled to a rebooked flight, and potentially, if the DOT mandates it, you are entitled to another flight on a different carrier. That could be something, you know, a piece of hope that comes out of all of this,” said Nastro.
