I had two WN flights cancelled out of OKC.. night of 12/25 and morning of 12/26. Their system has absolutely imploded, I've never seen anything like this before. Frustrating to see other airlines moving people across the country with way less issues. I think WN is going to have to do a lot to regain consumer confidence. There were people missing weddings, funerals, etc. out of OKC, absolute chaos.

That being said, I got to see the OKC airport for the first time in a while and I was very impressed!

A truly historic day in the US commercial aviation history. Southwest Airlines has had such a catastrophic operational failure there are now less than 25 Southwest aircraft currently in the air over the CONUS. Absolutely mind boggling. I am fascinated to hear what @catch22 will think of this event.

It is to the point US DOT has announced they are going to be investigating it

Looks like 30/40 Southwest flights cancelled out of OKC today, and another 30/40 already cancelled for tomorrow, plus 29/40 already cancelled for Wednesday. Just unbelievable. This is per https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/today/KOKC

Everyone struggled but Southwest got sent into an absolute death spiral because of their no hub model.

Their crews were scattered, so they had to cancel flights, but they can't get them un-scattered so cancelling more flights. Repeat and repeat.
Legacy was able to start with hubs and slowly recover.

It appears that Southwest Airlines has even more problems than staffing and cancellation issues. Now it is potential safety issues.
https://www.thestreet.com/travel/faa-has-serious-southwest-airlines-safety-concerns

It appears that Southwest Airlines has even more problems than staffing and cancellation issues. Now it is potential safety issues.
https://www.thestreet.com/travel/faa-has-serious-southwest-airlines-safety-concerns

Don't confuse people.

That doesn't say "Safety is why they had mass cancellation issues over the holidays.". It's just an FAA report. Big picture potential cultural issues.


The mass cancellations for SWA was weather, then their no hub business model sent them to a death spiral legacies didn't have to deal with.

Don't confuse people.

That doesn't say "Safety is why they had mass cancellation issues over the holidays.". It's just an FAA report. Big picture potential cultural issues.

I don’t see where Jersey Boss implied “safety is why they had mass cancellation.” He said that Southwest may have bigger issues than staffing and cancellations, which safety concerns very well would be a big issue, especially in the public eye.

Reading the article, it didn’t say anything that made it appear like the planes they do get in the air are at high risk of falling out of the sky or something shocking. A cultural issue could still be a problem but I’m not sure that it would affect anything outside of public perception.

This is an airline that held off on international routes for so long because their reservation system could not accept passport information, foreign currency, positive bag match, and some of the other unique demands of international.
This is an airline that would cancel any flights that were delayed so they would not be airborne at 2am CDT (As they call it Herb time) in order to fully power down their dispatch and operations center to reboot it as it could not process a date change overnight while airplanes were airborne. Someone from IT had to flip a switch every night to reset the airline for the day before operations could commence.
This is an airline that held off on the "baggage fee" craze of the mid-2000's not because they love their customers so much, but the fact that their reservation system was unable to automatically attach payments for miscellaneous fees onto an existing reservation, as well as their system not having any functionality to automatically attach a baggage tag number to an itinerary automatically. The manual process to attach these would slow check-in times too much and cause too much of a manpower drain. So "Bags Fly Free" was born. This lack of investment, while turned out good for customers, has cost them billions in lost ancillary revenue the other airlines have been eating up for 10-15 years.

Southwest Airlines runs 3,500 flights a day with 800 airplanes on the IT infrastructure and operational competency of an airline that has 20 airplanes. The house of cards was doomed to collapse at some point. Their stubbornness in not upgrading IT networks and software over the past 40 years has finally come to a head. Their brazen messaging of being the simple, small carrier has finally caught up to them now that they are in a mess they cannot dig themselves out of. They don't know where their crews are, they don't know where their airplanes are, and this is no longer to be blamed on the weather -- that excuse ended days ago. They fly through the same skies all of the rest of us do, and all the other airlines are back up and running taking care of their passengers who they have all but abandoned.

What made this weather event so bad that Southwest can't recover? There are snowstorms in various parts of the country every winter and the airlines never have this much trouble getting back on schedule, even Southwest.

What made this weather event so bad that Southwest can't recover? There are snowstorms in various parts of the country every winter and the airlines never have this much trouble getting back on schedule, even Southwest.

Wasn't this system larger than normal, meaning it started affecting airports last Thursday and didn't stop until yesterday in the NE? Didn't NY experience one of the worst blizzards in 50 years or so? It just sounds like with the shear number of cancellations across the entire network, coupled with WN already faltering system since the pandemic started, their system just couldn't hold up. Just by looking at WN schedules in and out of OKC it appears that WN didn't come back from the pandemic with a strong footing, much like all of the supply chain cracks that we have seen come to the surface in the past 2 years.

We were suppose to fly DL out of OKC at 6 am to ATL. It was delayed numerous times. The first delayed made it where we would miss connecting flight to FLL. They had absolutely no seats to get us anywhere in Florida. We looked at every city. They finally found a solution and we flew out of TUL at 6 am this morning and was able to make the original connection so ended well for us. The flight attendant told us the DL had added flights to their schedule to cover WN flights. The original OKC 6 am flight finally left OKC around 4 pm. Like usual, the DL staff was doing a great job dealing with it.

Oy, glad l just stayed home.

Heard United and others sending up gauge/ higher capacity planes to southwest bottlenecks to grab margin

Sister flew today from Dallas to California.

The flilght out of Love Field was delayed delayed delayed, then they finally gave a time. Sister got there, no plane, nothing. Crickets Chirping.

After false start after false start afer false start they finally were told they'd be boarding in a few minutes. That didn't happen either, because not enough crew. Finally got some crew, but not enough.

She finally got off the ground and to California.

I saw on the news that there were 1,000 people sleeping overnight in the Denver airport. That sucks. It's absolutely miserable sitting for a few hours at an airport, I can't imagine having to try to sleep in an airport terminal.

It';s got to be on par for hanging out at the Greyhound bus station waiting for your damn bus to show up. Maybe just a tiny bit better, but still miserable.

What made this weather event so bad that Southwest can't recover? There are snowstorms in various parts of the country every winter and the airlines never have this much trouble getting back on schedule, even Southwest.

They don't have a hub of pilots. AA has a huge hub in Dallas. So a huge chunk of crews start in Dallas, end in Dallas. They can use those crews to slowly rebuild service.

1. Southwest runs point to point. So a pilot starts in DC, goes to Nashville, to Dallas, to Phoenix, then dead heads home. Dallas to Phoenix gets cancelled while he's in Nashville for weather. Then his incoming plane to Nashville to go to Dallas gets cancelled. Now that crew is stuck in Nashville. This domino's system-wide. One gets cancelled, which forces another to get cancelled. (The AA flights from SWO to DFW, they typically just go back and forth)

2. Then their back-end IT system simply doesn't have the capability (in large enough numbers for it too matter) to figure our how to get that crew stuck in Nashville on a plane to fly somewhere, anywhere. IT system can't do the a schedule or how to do the ticketing for the passengers. They basically have to do it by hand, during the holidays with staffing low from the pandemic plus vacation. Staff that isn't particularly trained to excel at it because it's typically handled by the software.

3. Then on top of that Southwest being point to point, doesn't have a 100 crews sitting in one spot where they can restart service at airport XXXX and start restoration of the networks. Just thousands of crews scattered everywhere.

Compound that issue with they had crews out sick (winter), and the bare bones staffing levels as a result of the pandemic and it's a perfect storm.

This absolutely bonkers. Their system is totally paralyzed.

The Dallas-based carrier’s cuts amounted to 60% of its schedule and nearly 90% of overall cancellations in the U.S. on Wednesday, marking another day of disruptions even as weather conditions and operations at other airlines improved.

Close to 60% of Southwest flights were already canceled for Thursday. It scrubbed less than 1% of the schedule for Friday, but the carrier still has to accommodate the thousands of travelers left stranded by its meltdown.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/28/southwest-cancels-more-flights-rival-carriers-cap-fares-for-stranded-flyers.html

Another snowstorm to hit Denver tonight and tomorrow morning just as Southwest is trying to get the ball rolling again.

I won’t post the pictures I took here, but Southwest has 4 gates completely blocked off and lined up with full baggage carts of missed/lost bags in Denver. I estimate 40-50 bags per cart and around 200+ carts. Do the math.

This is an airline that held off on international routes for so long because their reservation system could not accept passport information, foreign currency, positive bag match, and some of the other unique demands of international.
This is an airline that would cancel any flights that were delayed so they would not be airborne at 2am CDT (As they call it Herb time) in order to fully power down their dispatch and operations center to reboot it as it could not process a date change overnight while airplanes were airborne. Someone from IT had to flip a switch every night to reset the airline for the day before operations could commence.
This is an airline that held off on the "baggage fee" craze of the mid-2000's not because they love their customers so much, but the fact that their reservation system was unable to automatically attach payments for miscellaneous fees onto an existing reservation, as well as their system not having any functionality to automatically attach a baggage tag number to an itinerary automatically. The manual process to attach these would slow check-in times too much and cause too much of a manpower drain. So "Bags Fly Free" was born. This lack of investment, while turned out good for customers, has cost them billions in lost ancillary revenue the other airlines have been eating up for 10-15 years.

Southwest Airlines runs 3,500 flights a day with 800 airplanes on the IT infrastructure and operational competency of an airline that has 20 airplanes. The house of cards was doomed to collapse at some point. Their stubbornness in not upgrading IT networks and software over the past 40 years has finally come to a head. Their brazen messaging of being the simple, small carrier has finally caught up to them now that they are in a mess they cannot dig themselves out of. They don't know where their crews are, they don't know where their airplanes are, and this is no longer to be blamed on the weather -- that excuse ended days ago. They fly through the same skies all of the rest of us do, and all the other airlines are back up and running taking care of their passengers who they have all but abandoned.

Reinstating investor dividends before the other airlines, pilots working for 2 years without a contract, billions for shareholdsr gifts while running an obsolete IT and phone system all add up to incompetance that adds to your professional takes.

Southwest Airlines Spent $5.6 Billion on Shareholder Gifts in Years Ahead of Mass Cancellation Crisis
https://www.commondreams.org/news/southwest-airlines-shareholder-gifts

I know no one has a crystal ball, but do you think they will be up and running a regular schedule by mid January? Asking for a friend!

I know no one has a crystal ball, but do you think they will be up and running a regular schedule by mid January? Asking for a friend!

SWA says January 1st partial schedule. Hopefully it will resume quickly after that.

Another snowstorm to hit Denver tonight and tomorrow morning just as Southwest is trying to get the ball rolling again.

I won’t post the pictures I took here, but Southwest has 4 gates completely blocked off and lined up with full baggage carts of missed/lost bags in Denver. I estimate 40-50 bags per cart and around 200+ carts. Do the math.

AirTags really were the perfect holiday gift for 2022 :)

Flying to Denver on Saturday. Thankfully on United.

Anyone know why AS is running this direct this morning? I assume the plane was down here for maintenance https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ASA9441/history/20221229/1636Z/KOKC/KSEA

Anyone know why AS is running this direct this morning? I assume the plane was down here for maintenance https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ASA9441/history/20221229/1636Z/KOKC/KSEA

OKC has a direct flight to Seattle on Alaska.

OKC has a direct flight to Seattle on Alaska.

Yes I know. It's the one that leaves around 4:35 daily

It's doing extremely well too. Hopefully we see some AS service expansion at some point.

Anyone know why AS is running this direct this morning? I assume the plane was down here for maintenance https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ASA9441/history/20221229/1636Z/KOKC/KSEA

And it got diverted back to OKC...

That is a maintenance ferry. They don’t operate it live, never have.

Southwest, in addition to offering full refunds, should provide reimbursement for any expenses travelers had (rental cars, hotels, other flights, etc) and at least $100 per ticket in vouchers for use on future flights. That’s the only way they can make this right and win back their customers.

It's doing extremely well too. Hopefully we see some AS service expansion at some point.

It'd be awesome if they captured the SFO route back from United. Maybe PDX but as a casual observer I don't think that would be as desired as the SEA route. Esp since it won't really open any new doors as far as the OneWorld alliance is concerned. At least with SFO you get Cathay and JAL to get to Asia and Qantas to get to Australia.

Was a 747 at Will Rogers today? And if so, why? That's awfully unusual.

Probably an ATLAS Air charter for OU return from Orlando

I remember flying on a United 747 from OKC to LAX and back to OKC when OU was in the Rose Bowl in 2002.

Was a 747 at Will Rogers today? And if so, why? That's awfully unusual.

JerseyBoss is right. It’s the OU football team charter (based on Twitter).