Southwest Airlines offers points to passengers after mass cancellations in a ‘gesture of goodwill’
mass flight cancellations may find a peace offering waiting in their inbox. The airline is giving travelers 25,000 Rapid Rewards bonus points as a “gesture of goodwill,” CEO Bob Jordan said in an email to customers Tuesday.
The offer applies to travelers whose flights were scheduled to fly between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2 “but were cancelled or significantly delayed greater than three hours” for each paid and ticket passenger on the reservation, the airline told USA TODAY in a statement. The offer is in addition to refunds and reimbursements for incidental expenses related to their disrupted travel plans.
“Our Purpose has always been to connect our customers to what’s important in their lives,” Jordan wrote in the emails to customers. “And this holiday season, as you made plans with us to do just that, we fell short. For that, please accept my personal apology.”
Marc Kruskol was among the customers who received the email.
Kruskol, 65, missed visiting his daughters in North Carolina for the holidays after his connecting flight through Denver was canceled on Christmas Eve. A gate agent told him the soonest he could fly there would be two days later, and that the airline would not cover hotel accommodations.
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He flew standby back home to the Los Angeles area instead and found the points offer insufficient.
“Frankly, it doesn’t even touch what they should be doing,” he told USA TODAY, adding that Southwest has not yet refunded his outbound connecting flights. He has not yet contacted the airline about that but plans to do so.
overwhelmed its technology, Southwest was forced to cut back its flights in order to get caught up. The airline had to manually schedule crews as a result of its outdated technology, while other airlines with newer cloud-based technology were able to recover more quickly.
Some had been flagging the outdated technology internally for years.
Is Southwest still canceling flights?
Southwest said it was resuming normal operations on Dec. 30 after canceling more than 15,000 flights in just over a week. But the airline continued to cancel hundreds of flights into the new year.
The airline canceled 204 flights on Monday and another 140 on Tuesday, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. Southwest had canceled 82 flights – or 2% of its schedule – as of early Wednesday afternoon.
What’s next for Southwest?
The airline’s meltdown also brought scrutiny from the federal government. “Southwest Airlines failed its customers. Point blank,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing Tuesday of the mass cancellations. “The Department of Transportation will hold them accountable to their commitments to make their customers whole.”
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Kruskol’s bag went on to North Carolina without him, but the airline contacted him Sunday. He expected to receive his luggage by Wednesday but received an email from FedEx notifying him that delivery was delayed until Thursday.
“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,” Jordan said in the email to customers.
While Kruskol was disappointed he wasn’t able to take his trip, after reading stories about other stranded travelers, he tried to keep his experience in perspective.
“I think of the people who didn’t make it, I didn’t have the worst of it,” he said, “I guess kind of like the nicest guy in prison.”
Contributing: Joey Garrison, USA TODAY