We managed to find another on American Airlines, but it was a few days out from when we had originally intended to leave, and were very pricey. The flight ended up taking off only 30 minutes after its originally scheduled departure time, and Hamilton said she “figured that would probably be the end of it.”īut a few days before their flight home on December 28, when they started to see headlines about the massive Southwest disruptions that were leaving countless customers stranded, “We realized we would probably not be leaving Dallas on Southwest at all and quickly tried to book another flight home. Their scheduling program was malfunctioning and they were forced to use the much slower method of calling the company to locate the last crew member,” recalls Hamilton. “An announcement was made on the overhead speaker that the ground crew was having trouble locating one last flight attendant. They flew out of Los Angeles International Airport on December 22, when the first signs of trouble arose. Mae Hamilton, an assistant editor at AFAR and a self-proclaimed “loyal Southwest customer,” also endured holiday flight disruptions when she and her husband attempted to fly from Los Angeles to Dallas for Christmas. Marzan is not the only one who found themselves in a holiday travel “flightmare” after Southwest’s operations experienced a complete meltdown over Christmas weekend and in the days after. I haven’t yet been able to connect with their customer-service team,” says Marzan, who is still hoping to get a reimbursement from Southwest for the car rental, which set her back $400 (the airline has promised refunds for canceled flights and reimbursements for travel expenses). “We were one of the lucky ones having the option to drive back. Ultimately, Southwest canceled more than 15,000 flights between Thursday, December 22, and Thursday, December 29, or more than half of its scheduled flights during that time frame, according to flight data tracking service FlightAware. carriers, Southwest struggled to normalize operations and continued to cancel flights in the days following Christmas. But even as operations recovered at other major U.S. Disruptions swept the country in the lead-up to and over the December 25 holiday weekend due to severe winter storms and colder-than-average weather across much of the United States. Southwest was not the only airline affected by delays and cancellations this past holiday season. The rental company said I got lucky I got a car reservation since they were turning people away,” says Marzan. So I immediately booked a rental car as backup in case I couldn’t rebook our flight. The line was wrapped around the terminal and the customer-service phone line was a constant busy signal. “We got to the kiosk at John Wayne Airport, and it said our flight was canceled and to talk to an agent. Their return flight from Orange County to the Bay Area on Southwest Airlines was scheduled for Monday, December 26. Last month, Northern California resident Joanne Marzan and her seven-year-old son took a short trip to Southern California to spend Christmas with Marzan’s family.
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