Flight Canceled Anyone?

[gorjus121]

And just like, that our first Christmas in Disney is not happening. Today's early morning flight from NY to Orlando was canceled last night. We tried for three hours to reschedule with Southwest but they had nothing till Thursday so we decided it was best to cancel and postpone our vacation. To make matters worse, we had trouble rebooking our flights online and we weren't credited the correct amount. After 9 1/2 hours and four multi-hour phone calls (3 disconnected) with Southwest, we have a flight rescheduled for Spring. Check your flights before going to the airport. We didn't get an alert for three hours after we noticed it canceled. Kids are disappointed but handled it very well. We were staying offsite at our Marriott timeshare that we could easily be rescheduled to a later date. I'm sure there are plenty of others that have encountered the same issue or worse. A Disney cast member I spoke to mentioned they had a few other calls already from very upset travelers. We considered driving down but losing days on our timeshare and the freezing temperatures with holiday traffic did not seem worth it. Hope there are not too many of you that had their trips canceled.

 

[Disneybuckeye]

Glad you were able to still take a trip. We are celebrating Xmas at our beach home near Siesta Key. Ou 30 something kids all made it down but our flight was cancelled and we cannot get there until Monday morning.

My mom is down there with them and we will celebrate when we get there. Luckily the weather is bad there this weekend so I do not feel too bad being stuck up north.

 

[Cheburashka]

I'm sorry that happened. This is one of the reasons I avoid Southwest: their limited options if something is delayed or canceled.

 

[georgina]

Sorry OP about your trip. It's not just Southwest. Thousands of flights have been cancelled on multiple days due to weather. Traveling in winter is always a gamble. DS got out of Seattle on Thursday, then they had bad weather and a lot of cancellations Friday.

 

[SkyGuy]

I'm sorry that happened. This is one of the reasons I avoid Southwest: their limited options if something is delayed or canceled.

Depends on the airport. We fly out of STL, and SW has its own terminal there. There are around 15 flights a day to Orlando alone, and if I just need to get to a major international hub there are at least that many flights to Chicago. But I think the weather limited the options for many the past few days.

 

[gorjus121]

The airport we use for Southwest is smaller and 15 minutes away which is wonderful. In the future, I would fly out of JFK with another airline during the holidays. The staff we spoke to on the phone were great, but their system is just awful. During Covid I was able to cancel and rebook with a Delta agent via chat. That was so much easier and you didn't have to worry about a dropped call. We were initially upset our Christmas in Disney was canceled, but we will be there for our Spring Break where we can enjoy warmer weather.

 

[bcla]

NM

 

[kylenne]

The airport we use for Southwest is smaller and 15 minutes away which is wonderful. In the future, I would fly out of JFK with another airline during the holidays. The staff we spoke to on the phone were great, but their system is just awful. During Covid I was able to cancel and rebook with a Delta agent via chat. That was so much easier and you didn't have to worry about a dropped call. We were initially upset our Christmas in Disney was canceled, but we will be there for our Spring Break where we can enjoy warmer weather.

Delta was doing a lot of pre-emptive canceling and rebooking ahead of the storm. I was originally supposed to fly to BWI from JFK on Friday afternoon, but received notice on Wednesday that the flight was canceled and I was automatically rebooked for Friday night. Come Friday night there were a couple of delays and ultimately it was pushed back to Saturday morning. Made it out fine, then. All things considered, it could have been way worse, and I was impressed by the way Delta handled things. They showed the Southwest counter at BWI on the local news this evening and the lines were obscene.

 

[MAH4546]

I'm sorry that happened. This is one of the reasons I avoid Southwest: their limited options if something is delayed or canceled.

Southwest is the largest domestic airline. They carry more domestic passengers than any airline. They have a massive amount of options if something is delayed or canceled.

That said, most airlines will accommodate you on another airline. Southwest will not. So when there is a systemwide meltdown like Southwest is having, reaccommodating does become more difficult.

 

[DL1WDW2]

Yesterday, the news reports &rumors were massive SW meltdown thru New Years
and quite possible not just because of the weather but also staffing shortage.
Makes me wonder if SW flight cancellations are ruining many WDW/NYE / marathon trips .
Goodluck and keep us updated with your delays and resort plans.
Hoping for the best for everybody .
but glad I’m not traveling this week

 

[Cheburashka]

That said, most airlines will accommodate you on another airline. Southwest will not.

Yes, there are fewer options with Southwest when flights are cancelled, which is what I said.

 

[katallo]

We have friends stuck at BWI with SW. They said it is unbelievable and SW never again.

 

[Cheburashka]

Yesterday, the news reports &rumors were massive SW meltdown thru New Years
and quite possible not just because of the weather but also staffing shortage.

From a news article I read, a lot of it is poor IT that got overwhelmed with making passenger/crew/schedule changes, so they had to shut a huge portion of flights down just to get their systems caught up.

I was stuck at an airport for hours once due to Southwest's IT system randomly shutting down. All of their flights stopped- it was nothing to do with weather that time. It was a normal day and other airlines were still humming along.

Southwest should have invested more of their Covid money into updating their IT.

 

[kylenne]

We have friends stuck at BWI with SW. They said it is unbelievable and SW never again.

I’m there now and the lines for their counters were awful. Saw many SW planes sitting on the tarmac too. I hope your friends get to where they need to go safely. Very thankful to be flying Delta today.

 

[notatallmagic]

Our flight coming home mid day on the 24th was cancelled (we had a call/text early the morning of the 23rd). We just had to re-click a link to be re-booked on a flight late night/early morning on the 25th/26th. From what we could see, Frontier cancelled all their flights to our area on the 23rd and 24th, so our return flight was one of the first ones back to our area, which had sub-zero windchills and blizzard conditions.

We always buy trip insurance with our airline tickets, and from what I can tell, it should cover our extra hotel night (very reasonable at Universal; they even arranged for us to stay in the same room) and meal costs for our extra time there (almost 48 hours). We are very blessed to have been "stuck" there, as we would have been driving on the turnpike near our home right around the time of the awful multi-car accident just hours before we would have been there.

 

[sam_gordon]

Southwest is the largest domestic airline. They carry more domestic passengers than any airline. They have a massive amount of options if something is delayed or canceled.

Looks like that number changes year to year.

2Q 2022: https://www.surffares.com/travelguru/usa-airlines/ Looks like SW is #3
2021: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109993/largest-airlines-north-america-passengers/ SW is #4

And if they had so many options, why did they account for roughly 75% of total cancellations on Monday? And at least their second issue of the year. I remember my sister and her family ended up driving from Indianapolis to Florida over the summer when SW had a bunch of cancellations.

 

[gorjus121]

#1 trending search on Yahoo right now is the SW cancellations. Here's an article about the USDOT investigating.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/tra...ent-transportation-investigating/69758784007/

 

[kylenne]

From a news article I read, a lot of it is poor IT that got overwhelmed with making passenger/crew/schedule changes, so they had to shut a huge portion of flights down just to get their systems caught up.

I was stuck at an airport for hours once due to Southwest's IT system randomly shutting down. All of their flights stopped- it was nothing to do with weather that time. It was a normal day and other airlines were still humming along.

Southwest should have invested more of their Covid money into updating their IT.

A representative from the pilots union was on one of the news shows saying that Southwest's system is literally 90s tech. That would explain a whole lot about this. I'm a govt IT worker and daily see the results of orgs using antiquated systems and refusing to modernize. The customer experience always suffers with this penny wise pound foolish way of thinking.

 

[JLTraveling]

We are very blessed to have been "stuck" there, as we would have been driving on the turnpike near our home right around the time of the awful multi-car accident just hours before we would have been there.

So glad you got stuck! Something similar happened to us coming back from Alaska years ago. We got stuck for 24 hours at the Denver airport on the 4th of July. It was when that awful monorail crash happened. Our plan had been to go to MK that day, and one of our favorite things to do was wait for the very last monorail and ride up front with the driver. So glad we didn't make it back for that!

 

[notatallmagic]

So glad you got stuck! Something similar happened to us coming back from Alaska years ago. We got stuck for 24 hours at the Denver airport on the 4th of July. It was when that awful monorail crash happened. Our plan had been to go to MK that day, and one of our favorite things to do was wait for the very last monorail and ride up front with the driver. So glad we didn't make it back for that!

So glad your plans changed as well! It's a very sobering feeling; so grateful we weren't there - it was a horrific , tragic accident.