Update on Southwest woes?

[vwlfan]

Anyone have a feel for whether SW has gotten out of its own way?

hoping so, have a brief trip in mid November and don’t want to go through the nightmare we endured on a july trip we had

 

[WDWEPCOT]

Anxiously awaiting my early November trip !! Fingers and toes crossed as they have changed it twice already

 

[wfjny]

Sadly, I still do not "trust" the airlines just yet.

And by "trust", I mean their ability to get me to my destination on-time.

Then again, I may just be reacting to a lot of the negative news lately. I have no idea what the overall on time percentage is right now.

 

[SteveH]

A few days/weeks should paint a clearer picture but the recent actions by backtracking on their stance will still take a bit of unravel. Southwest drops plan to put unvaccinated staff on unpaid leave

 

[vwlfan]

have never had a problem of any sort until the trip from hell this summer . given what the news has described and what these boards offer,,,, their woes continue and affect loyal customers like us

 

[keishashadow]

https://news.yahoo.com/southwest-airlines-suffers-75m-loss-192000159.html

“The airline will schedule out flights for the rest of October but announced it would cut down on December flights to mitigate the chances of a similar situation.

The schedule for 2022 will be built on "more conservative staffing assumptions," Southwest said.

Holidays should offset any problems for the remainder of 2021, the airline added.

 

[_19disnA]

Balancing supply/demand isn't going to be anything any airline can resolve overnight. When covid first started last year, virtually no one was flying and airlines grounded many of their aircraft and layed off employees. How many planes are still out of service doesn't seem to be anything airlines want to talk about. Too few employees, too many active routes and too few planes in service seem to be contributing to Southwest's issues. Peak travel times along with any significant weather issues can still upset the system.

 

[PrincesCJM]

I flew on them Saturday to MCO and home on Wednesday to MHT. No issues other than our flight leaving MCO on Wednesday was a little delayed (but it was less than 20 minutes delayed). I was nervous but was thankful to be on direct flights

 

[keishashadow]

Peak travel times along with any significant weather issues can still upset the system.

Yes, but they’ve had time to reallocate & reset schedules. How about don’t sell a ticket (let alone oversell the plane) if you don’t realistically intend to deliver?

It’s all academic until you actually experience it (twice so far for us this since August). It’s getting old. I’m talking multi day/week periods that grounded flights.

This am Checked in for flight on spirit. So far so good. Knock on wood

Despite the continual denials of any labor strive, the Cynic in me predicts now that SWA has backed down on mandatory employee vaccines; this will all go away

 

[DVC-Don]

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.

 

[Donna M]

My son said the company is not requiring the covid shot so the crew went back to work. Not sure.

 

[SteveH]

My son said the company is not requiring the covid shot so the crew went back to work. Not sure.

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.

 

[HMcH]

I flew into MCO on SW on 10/20 and back on 10/23 (not a Disney trip). My flight on 10/20 was delayed 3 times for a total of about 2 1/2 hours late leaving. Funny enough they had another flight leaving for MCO 10 minutes after mine took off.

Flying back on 10/23 it was delayed once for about 20 minutes. Not a big deal.

 

[mickmom728]

We flew from Pittsburgh this morning and had zero issues. On time and luggage came out super fast! I also flew earlier this month Cleveland to LaGuardia and everything was great then, too!

 

[hsmamato2]

flew last week with no issues.

 

[Disneytam]

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.

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.

 

[tjmw2727]

I flew SWA r/t Baltimore - Tampa last week and both flights were on time - actually the flight home was 20 minutes early!

 

[hsmamato2]

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)

 

[spiders]

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)

That’s not necessarily an accurate way to determine if delays exist. The times that airlines schedule rarely — if ever — match the times with Flight Aware. Flight Aware is concerned with takeoff to touchdown times. In airlines, there are four times they use:

Out: The time when the parking brake is released and ready for push
Off: The time it actually took off
On: The time the wheels hit the runway
In: The time the parking brake is set and at the gate

 

[What-r-ya Goofy?]

We've been flying Southwest from Chicago to MCO regularly for the last twenty years plus. This trip, 10-24 through 10-31, has been a disaster.

We sat at the gate on our flight out of Chicago for almost an hour due to a computer glitch. Somehow we made up for most of the delay in the air.

Our 11:30 am return flight out of MCO got canceled in the middle of the night the day of. Before we found out and could react, all flights out of MCO were booked for the day. The next available flight out was early the next morning. We spent the night at the airport hotel.

Our early morning flight the next day was again canceled in the middle of the night. Luckily my wife saw the notification at 3:30am and we were able to snag one of the few remaining flights later in the day.

We're here at the airport now for a second day hoping we make it home today. Two days at the airport has not been fun after a week at Disney.

My advice to SW travelers is to keep an eye open for flight cancelation notices in the middle of the night. If you snooze you loose as alternate flights disappear quickly early morning. I think this is being made worse be the problems American is having with their cancelations.