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Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

neveragainSWA
Explorer C

Sorry to rant, but this needs to be heard!  I'm not a loyal SWA customer - I was talked into booking this time with some friends we were going to travel with.  The very short of this is we booked a flight 7 months ago that was cancelled 18 hours before via text message.  I spend another 3 hours on the phone with a SWA agent getting a flight to a nearby airport (which created a whole other host of problems) only to have it get cancelled after I show up at 4:00am to check in for it.  I was told that there were no flight alternatives in the next 24 hours, but they were "really sorry".  I was the only one that was sorry at this point.  No refund, just screw you!  So I had to book with United that cost us $1200 one-way and sort out all the other details that this disruption had caused.  So tell me - what other industry has the right to take your money and then not provide any goods or services and then at their discretion decide how or what you'll get back as a "consolation"?  This is ridiculous!

21 REPLIES 21

Re: Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

chgoflyer
Aviator A

Sorry to hear about your issues. Unfortunately, Southwest isn't doing too well right now and are cancelling a much higher percentage of their flights than other carriers. The reasons are complicated, but hopefully they will get back to a more "normal" place with their operations in the coming months. 

 

Be aware that, if Southwest cancelled your flight you are due a full refund back to the original form of payment. Reach out to Customer Relations to request that (my recommendation is via Twitter for the quickest response).

Re: Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

neveragainSWA
Explorer C

I contacted SWA customer relations twice and was offered $200 in vouchers - that's it!  Sorry they are doing badly right now, but you don't get back on track by stealing from travelers.

Re: Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

chgoflyer
Aviator A
Solution

@neveragainSWA wrote:

I contacted SWA customer relations twice and was offered $200 in vouchers - that's it!  Sorry they are doing badly right now, but you don't get back on track by stealing from travelers.


 

If you did not travel on your ticket because Southwest canceled your flight you also receive a full refund back to the original form of payment.

 

 

 

 

Re: Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

jkellar12
Explorer B

Same exact experience except I've been A list for the past several years.  Treated me like dirt and had to spend an extra night for $200 and an $80 uber laguardia and gave me a $200 voucher.  I tried to ask for a refund for all my future flights but by the letter of the law all tickets are non-refundable even if they can't deliver the service. Used to love the company but what they are doing is unethical but not illegal by how current laws are set up. 

 

The grey line they are also exploiting is weather.  They now just straight up cancel flights and don't even attempt to delay.  There is no good faith and they are then not financially responsible. Essentially they are free to cancel the flight if any potential weather and then divert that plane to other parts of their network.  As I will show below they purposely have a larger schedule than what is reasonabily addressed by their current amount of planes even though they said they have adjusted their schedule due to 737 Max groundings.

 

My recent flight every other plane left Newark that night.  Some delayed several hours but Southwest was the only one to cancel Newark to Midway flights. It didn't even rain for more than 10 minutes.  This leaves us the customer high and dry and they don't comp us anythign except the cost of the ticket. I trust a ticket scalper more than Southwest to deliver on the service.

 

I posted the data below  and trying to get full year data from flightaware.com  but this seems system wide.  I compiled last week of stats from flightaware.com and its staggering.  I have compiled a list of reports from national newspapers such as NYT andUSAToday. They have more resources than a small guy like me and you and hopefully they publish an article about Southwest's unethitcal practices.

 

Cancelled Flights6/1/20196/2/20196/3/20196/4/20196/5/2019
 SundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursday
Southwest172167111187123
American1518185714
Delta05674
United612272
Total Cancelled Flights329265127258143
LUV's total52.28%63.02%87.40%72.48%86.01%
      
Delayed Flights6/1/20196/2/20196/3/20196/4/20196/5/2019
 SundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursday
Southwest  371945350
American  404831200
Delta  20530077
United  28860093
Total Delayed Flights  12682676720
LUV's total  29.26%35.31%48.61%

Re: Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

SWDigits
Aviator A

@jkellar12 what is the specific web page on flightaware.com for your data?  When I pull up this page the numbers are different.

 

I never knew the site had those statistics so I learned something new from you today.


Customer | Home airport DCA

Re: Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

jkellar12
Explorer B

For some reason this won’t let me put urls in here but if you google the phrase “flight aware cancellations” it shows up first in google search. FlightAware aggregates all flight cancellations and delays by every airline across the world. The data only goes back a couple of days but FlightAware said they have data that goes back years.

 

I got used to using the website thanks to all the cancellations and flight delays by southwest I’ve indured since the 737max grounding.

 

obviously it impacted them the most because they rely on 737 but they said they removed and adjusted their schedule because of it. Seems to me they haven’t. Other large national carriers have 2% or lower cancellation. They seem to be average 4-5% which weirdly is about how many planes they are 737maxs they are short.  Seems to me they said one thing and didn’t do it. 

 

Re: Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

SWDigits
Aviator A

@jkellar12 wrote:

For some reason this won’t let me put urls in here


If you are posting to the forums using your phone then you have to use html to post links.

 

However if you are on a computer then you can select "RICH TEXT" (rather than "HTML" or "PREVIEW") mode for the message (look at the top).  In rich text mode you can highlight the text within your post then click on the link button to add the html link.


Customer | Home airport DCA

Re: Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

jkellar12
Explorer B

For some reason this won’t let me put urls in here but if you google the phrase “flight aware cancellations” it shows up first in google search. FlightAware aggregates all flight cancellations and delays by every airline across the world. The data only goes back a couple of days but FlightAware said they have data that goes back years.

 

I got used to using the website thanks to all the cancellations and flight delays by southwest I’ve indured since the 737max grounding.

 

obviously it impacted them the most because they rely on 737 but they said they removed and adjusted their schedule because of it. Seems to me they haven’t. Other large national carriers have 2% or lower cancellation. They seem to be average 4-5% which weirdly is about how many planes they are 737maxs they are short.  Seems to me they said one thing and didn’t do it.  

 

Re: Flight cancelled twice and cost me a fortune!

chgoflyer
Aviator A

@jkellar12 wrote:

I tried to ask for a refund for all my future flights but by the letter of the law all tickets are non-refundable even if they can't deliver the service. Used to love the company but what they are doing is unethical but not illegal by how current laws are set up. 

 

 

Southwest's ongoing operational issues are unfortunate. For some time now I've been favoring other carriers, and recommending that flyers consider using alternate carriers (when available) for non-discretionary travel. And that's genuinely sad.

 

Do keep in mind however that, per the Contract of Carriage, you are due a full refund (in the form of original purchase) for any flight that is cancelled or delayed or rescheduled. I realize that this isn't much help for many, since delays and cancellations often occur too late for one to make alternate arrangements without significant cost. But worth noting.

 

As has been discussed frequently, "weather" is a much more common reason for delay/cancellation on Southwest due to their point-to-point system, vs the hub-and-spoke of other carriers. Weather can cause a domino effect through the system since planes hopscotch across the country vs back and forth between two airports.

 

And, most importantly, when there is already stress on the system -- mechanic's issues, grounded planes, over-scheduling -- relatively small issues get greatly magnified and problems increase exponentially. Southwest has essentially been in irregular operations for months.

 

With regard to your chart, can you please explain what "LUV's total" represents?