Southwest Airlines is sending out vouchers worth as much as $300 to clean up the reputational damage from canceling more than 17,100 flights in eight days around Christmas.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines is trying to untangle a mess it made after winter weather swept across the country in the days before Christmas and led to a complete meltdown of the carrier’s pilot and flight attendant scheduling system.
The company has promised to refund “reasonable requests” for reimbursement for expenses incurred by passengers who dealt with flight delays and began sending emails to customers this morning as a goodwill offering with a code for 25,000 Rapids Rewards points for Southwest’s frequent flyer program.
“I know that no amount of apologies can undo your experience,” said the email to disrupted passengers attributed to CEO Bob Jordan. “For those who have requested refunds, reimbursements and/or are waiting to be reunited with lost bag(s), those processes are being handled with great urgency and we appreciate your patience. Additionally, please accept this gesture of goodwill of 25,000 Rapid Rewards bonus points.”
The points can be used for customers to buy future travel, gift cards or merchandise.
“Today’s gesture of goodwill is separate from additional refund requests or reimbursement requests,” Southwest spokesman Chris Perry said in a statement. “Customers whose flights were canceled or significantly delayed between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2, and did not elect to rebook or travel, received 25,000 Rapid Rewards points.”
Meanwhile, the company said it is working to reunite passengers with thousands of bags misplaced during the operational struggles between Dec. 22 and Dec. 29.
Southwest executives are effusively apologizing to customers since the meltdown began, the worst operational issue in company history that came as the airline industry was already under intense scrutiny from federal officials.
Company leaders have blamed the struggles on outdated technology in its crew scheduling systems, saying the software was overwhelmed by the need to delay and cancel hundreds of flights when cold weather and winds hit key Southwest airports in Chicago and Denver on Dec. 22.
But by delaying and canceling a large number of flights, software systems couldn’t keep up with the need to reassign pilots and flight attendants. As with previous operational meltdowns, the problem grew in the following days until the company was forced to give in on Monday, Dec. 26, and cancel two-thirds of its flights for the next three days in an attempt to “reset” and recover.
Southwest’s problems caused major ripples through the air travel system as thousands of passengers each day tried to rebook travel. At the peak on Dec. 26, Southwest’s cancellations accounted for 11.7% of all flights in the country, according to Flightaware.com
Analysts have estimated that the flight problems could cost the company $500 to $700 million, according to reports from Airline Weekly and CNBC. Meanwhile, company officials have declined to put a price tag on the meltdown while it totals the damages and works through claims for reimbursement. The company’s meltdown in October 2021, when about 2,000 flights were nixed, cost the airline $75 million.
Meanwhile, Southwest said it was able to recover from its flight disruptions by Friday and was able to get 99.1% of its passengers to their destination over the four-day weekend period.
The company said it could take a while to sort through requests for reimbursement, which includes costs like alternate flights, rental cars, hotels, food and other potential expenses. The company said it is not putting exact parameters on the refund policy and will examine each request on a case-by-case basis.
“Realistically it’s going to take us several weeks here to get back to customers,” Chief Commercial Officer Ryan Green said in a call with reporters last week. “We are working as diligently as we can and automating as much of that as we can to process through those quickly. But it’s our goal to work through that as quickly as possible.”
In the weeks and months ahead, Southwest will now have to prove to the traveling public that these kinds of issues won’t happen again and that it’s making the needed upgrades to its technology infrastructure, said analyst Chris Raite with Third Bridge.
“I think this is the kind of thing that sticks with consumers,” he said.
