Travelers seek for their suitcases in a baggage holding space for Southwest Airlines at Denver International Airport on Dec. 28 in Denver, Colo.

Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

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Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

Travelers seek for their suitcases in a baggage holding space for Southwest Airlines at Denver International Airport on Dec. 28 in Denver, Colo.

Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

Families with younger kids stranded on the airport for Christmas. Flight attendants and pilots sleeping on flooring. Vast piles of baggage — some with presents inside, some with treatment — caught within the fallacious airport. And pissed off vacationers caught on maintain for hour after hour.

Southwest Airline’s cascading failures have checked a veritable bingo card of journey nightmares. And whereas each airline confronted dangerous climate and cancellations final week, solely Southwest fell aside.

Southwest now says operations have returned to normal. But what occurred? What’s subsequent? The firm nonetheless has a number of explaining to do, however here is what we all know thus far:

It wasn’t simply the climate — outdated techniques helped trigger the disaster

A large winter storm brought on the preliminary flight disruptions, but it surely was the corporate’s internal software systems that appear to have turned a traditional drawback into an astonishing catastrophe.

Many airways use a “hub and spoke” system, routing flights by way of a number of huge airports to chop prices. Southwest has lengthy prided itself on utilizing a “point to point” system as a substitute. It’s a leaner system day-to-day but in addition means a number of advanced scheduling challenges to get planes, pilots and flight crews in the fitting place on the proper time.

By all accounts Southwest was utilizing badly outdated pc techniques to handle that difficult system.

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan in contrast the airline’s debacle to a “giant puzzle” that must be solved. And he stated the corporate clearly wanted to speed up its “already existing plans to upgrade systems.”

The Department of Transportation says it’s launching its personal investigation into precisely what went fallacious.

The epic failure of the airline caught many without warning

Southwest is not a fly-by-night operation, or a bare-bones low cost airline the place prospects have low expectations and distress is a part of the cut price. It was a well-respected — in some instances, even beloved — firm.

“They’ve got the best reputation for customer service and management agility,” airline analyst Richard Aboulafia told NPR. “They’re usually pretty good at responding to crises.”

Customers are bewildered by how horrible this expertise has been.

“I have 50,000 miles with them,” stated Hillary Chang, a traveler whose bag is misplaced within the Southwest catastrophe vortex. Now, she says, “I’ve been thinking about it … I’m open to dating another airline.”

Customers aren’t the one ones offended. Employees are pissed off, too

The president of the union representing Southwest pilots known as the Christmas meltdown “catastrophic” however told NPR he, for one, wasn’t shocked by it — and neither have been most pilots.

“We’re still using, not only IT from the ’90s, but also processes [from] when our airline was a tenth of the size,” he stated. “And it’s really just not scaled for an operation that we have today.”

There have been a number of scheduling meltdowns within the final two years that, whereas smaller than the Christmas catastrophe, indicated that Southwest had an issue. Pilots have been able to work, however Southwest did not have planes or routes obtainable for them. The similar state of affairs unfolded on this catastrophe, and lots of pilots and flight crews took to social media to specific frustration with their very own firm.

Customers could also be reimbursed for “reasonable” bills (… no matter meaning)

Southwest is required by regulation to supply a full refund for a canceled flight. It has additionally beforehand committed, for any avoidable cancellation or excessive delay, to rebook passengers at no further price, and provide vouchers for meals and lodge lodging.

And Southwest appears keen to cowl much more prices for this debacle. But the corporate has not supplied clear pointers about what bills they are going to cowl, solely saying that they are going to honor “reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation (such as rental cars, or tickets on other airlines).”

And after all, there is not any reimbursement for lacking Christmas with your loved ones, or spending an evening on an airport ground with a cranky toddler and no baggage.

Southwest has a number of apologies, and never a ton of solutions

For its half, Southwest is sorry. Really sorry. The CEO is sorry. The Chief Commercial Officer is sorry. “We cannot apologize enough,” customer support reps are telling livid passengers on Twitter. (They appear to be giving it their best shot, although.)

Meanwhile, the FAQs on Southwest’s “Travel Disruption” site appear not a lot useful as Kafkaesque.

What must you do if receiving an error message whereas making an attempt to rebook on-line? “We encourage you to keep trying to rebook,” Southwest advises.

What must you do if you cannot discover any seats on flights? “We encourage you to keep looking,” Southwest says.

And what in case you are caught on maintain for hours and might’t get by way of to an agent? “If you need to reach us urgently, you may continue to call.”