Peak travel times along with any significant weather issues can still upset the system.
That's a fair "cliff notes" version. The company, like many others, was using the excuse that President Biden was requiring it to mandate it themselves. But the Presidents Executive order that requires it still really has no teeth and the draft version that OSHA sent the President has still not been fully implmented. Several states plan to fight it when/if it is adopted. Because of union agreements a company can not just knee jerk an adopt it. So Southwest has backed off for now, but it's unknown for how long so stay tuned.My son said the company is not requiring the covid shot so the crew went back to work. Not sure.
We flew Albany to Orlando the end of October and had a long delay on the down flight but otherwise no issue. The return flight was another story. We flew to BWI from Orlando but were not supposed to change planes. The flight from Orlando was over sold and left late, but worse we were told just before we landed at BWI that we would have to change planes. Then just as we started to depart the plane the flight crew were notified of an issue in the airport and they had to close the door and stop letting passengers off. That took about 10 minutes and they got the all clear. Then of course our boarding numbers didn't matter and we went from having A boarding to being allowed on after the B boarding. Just happy to be able to sit together. Finally we had another long delay as it was discovered that a connecting flight had been canceled and they didn't want to strand anyone at the Albany airport. So some of those passengers got off the plane. It really was a weird flight and we got into Albany about an hour and a half late. Hoping our December trip goes a little smoother.My wife recently flew two round trips on Southwest to Albany, NY and back to Orlando on October 12/13 and October 20/22. No delays or cancellations. Arrived at destination 15 to 5 minutes early both times.
SWA experiences in the last week or so.... DH flew BDL-STL...no delays or problems (saturday) we flew STL-MCO (thursday nite) flight was delayed all day (tracked it on flightaware) and was delayed by 1.5 hours by the time we were supposed to leave.... got to MCO after midnight due to the delay- but we got there. Flew MCO-BDL Sunday morning, boarded about 10-15 minutes late, then sat on a crewless plane for at least 45 minutes waiting......(there were FA's aboard tho) till takeoff- they made up about 1/2 hour of time on the flight tho. Overall,based on their recent problems not too terrible. Not thrilling, but not terrible.
One thing I noticed, do NOT rely on the SWA app to tell you the truth. Flightaware has a more up to date info on flight logs entered,I could see they never intended to depart at the time on the app, from the day before I saw on FA that it was planned to leave 10 minutes later than the app,which never updated to tell the truth about the delays either.(I use the flightaware webpage, not the app)