Southwest Airlines Schedule Stabilizes After Holiday Meltdown But Costs Are Still Piling Up

Bank of America estimates the debacle will cost Southwest between $600 million and $700 million.Southwest Airlines

stabilized its schedule over the weekend after about 16,000 cancellations, but its systemwide holiday meltdown could cost it hundreds of millions of dollars. Southwest had canceled 304 flights since Friday, 2% of its schedule, most of them on Monday when U.S. airlines faced bad weather and ground stops in Florida tied to a Federal Aviation Administration equipment outage. For comparison, from Dec. 21 through Dec. 29 Southwest had scrubbed about 45% of its operation, a far bigger share than other major airlines, according to FlightAware.

Now come two more difficult tasks for Southwest: going through thousands of passenger reimbursement receipts and improving the internal technology that contributed to the meltdown.Sign up for NBC Chicago newsletters. "We have plans to invest in tools and technology and processes, but there will be immediate work to understand what lessons are learned here and how we keep this from ever happening again, because it cannot happen again," Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, who took the helm in February, told staff Friday.Bad weather kicked off the issues, impacting flights throughout the U.S.

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Insiders at Southwest reveal how the airline's service implodedSouthwest Airlines vows to make things right with passengers after a massive travel meltdown scuttled holiday plans for hundreds of thousands of passengers. How, by offering a $10 discount that expires in 30 days? Their 'compensation' is usually pretty lame. SouthwestAir How can they make things right - they can never make up the time lost and the aggravation it’s customers suffered This happens every year. Maybe use an ounce of common sense and don’t travel between December 15-Jan 2 or the 5 days before thanksgiving.
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