Southwest Airlines has canceled greater than 15,000 flights within the final week and has misplaced hundreds of luggage.

Craig Hastings/Getty Images

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Craig Hastings/Getty Images

Southwest Airlines has canceled greater than 15,000 flights within the final week and has misplaced hundreds of luggage.

Craig Hastings/Getty Images

One of probably the most highly effective issues about social media is that it might probably take you proper into the center of a state of affairs: A Lizzo concert, a political rally, a Florida emu farm, a picnic the place a young man expresses his devotion to corn…

Or a Southwest Airlines baggage declare on the Houston airport on Christmas Day, the place an ocean of suitcases spreads out so far as the attention can see.

This video was posted by Hillary Chang, 29, a longtime Southwest Airlines devotee. “I am a very loyal Southwest customer,” says Chang, who travels incessantly together with her boyfriend. “I have a Southwest credit card. We actually only fly Southwest.”

At least they did.

Chang and her boyfriend had been booked on a Southwest flight on Christmas Day, from Baltimore to their house in Los Angeles, with a connection in Houston. They arrived in Houston hours late, solely to study their flight to LA had been canceled. They had been informed to get their luggage and attempt to rebook.

They hurried to the luggage declare, the place the TikTok scene was unfold out in entrance of them. What Chang did not point out was that her boyfriend had lately proposed and (whereas the ring itself was on her finger) the ring field was in her checked bag and she or he had been hoping to put it aside as a memento.

“I’m not gonna lie, I was in tears,” she says with fun. “I was. I was crying.”

Hillary Chang and her boyfriend lately obtained engaged. Chang was carrying her ring, however the ring field was in Chang’s checked baggage on Southwest Airlines, which she fears is misplaced.

Hillary Chang

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Hillary Chang

Hillary Chang and her boyfriend lately obtained engaged. Chang was carrying her ring, however the ring field was in Chang’s checked baggage on Southwest Airlines, which she fears is misplaced.

Hillary Chang

Trying to get any assist from (and even be heard by) Southwest was futile, says Chang. There had been a whole bunch of individuals ready in line for customer support. Still, Chang might have a voice and discover a sympathetic ear on social media.

“This is what the Houston airport looks like,” she says within the TikTok, panning over a whole bunch of unclaimed suitcases. It’s sufficient to make any frequent flyer’s blood run chilly.

Last week, a sequence of large winter storms slammed the U.S. and nearly shut down vacation journey in some elements of the nation.

All airways had cancellations and delays, however none like Southwest Airlines, which has canceled greater than 15,000 flights — 10 occasions greater than every other service.

It’s a public relations catastrophe for Southwest, to not point out an enormous monetary hit. Citigroup estimates the vacation flight debacle might trigger important injury to the airline’s earnings.

Magnifying the black eye for Southwest is social media. All week, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok have been filled with photos and movies of individuals’s harrowing journey experiences, making the scope of the fail much more visceral.

One lady tweeted that she had been caught within the airport for days with two toddlers and a child.

Posts like these have tens of millions of views and feedback equivalent to “Don’t fly @SouthwestAir folks” and “Southwest is going to get destroyed over this and rightfully so.”

Even the White House piled on, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweet-shaming the airline.

Airline analyst Richard Aboulafia, with AeroDynamic Advisory, says he was shocked by the Southwest meltdown.

“They’ve got the best reputation for customer service and management agility,” he says. “They’re usually pretty good at responding to crises and I’m really surprised by all this.”

Still, Aboulafia thinks Southwest Airlines might win again these clients if it handles this case the appropriate manner. “As bad as this weekend was, there wasn’t a safety issue,” he says. “I think customers can forgive them.”

Southwest loyalist Hillary Chang is not so certain.

Stuck in Houston, trying on the expanse of rollerboards and a large line of annoyed vacationers, Chang and her fiancé realized they would want to fend for themselves.

They rented a automobile and drove the 21 hours again to LA. Chang posted a brief TikTok of the highway journey, which concerned driving by way of the night time with a purpose to be again to work on the morning of Dec. 27. The TikTok did yield some fruit — one in every of Chang’s pals despatched her $50 for gasoline, wishing the couple properly on their lengthy drive.

Southwest’s CEO Bob Jordan posted a social media video of his personal, calling the weeklong disaster a “giant puzzle” and pledging to unravel what had occurred. And although hundreds of consumers are nonetheless stranded, Southwest says it expects to renew regular operations by Friday and is taking new bookings for the primary time in days.

It’s chilly consolation for Chang, who says she has questioned her years-long loyalty to the service.

“I have 50,000 miles with them … and I’ve been thinking about it, trust me. I’m not totally finished with Southwest, but I’m open … I’m open to dating another airline.”

Chang by no means expects to see her suitcase (or her ring field) once more. “People keep telling me to stay positive, but if they would’ve seen what I saw at the Houston airport, they wouldn’t,” she says. “I can hope that maybe it will appear in a few weeks, but at this point, I think mentally I just have to be like, ‘It’s gone and that’s OK.'”