9:46 am ET, February 9, 2023
Southwest is already returning some angry customers
By CNN’s Chris Isidore
Stranded passengers search for their luggage at the Southwest Airlines baggage claim at Midway Airport on December 27, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois.
(Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
Southwest Airlines is paying the price for canceling about half its schedule between Dec. 20 and Dec. 29 — more than 16,700 flights during the busy holiday season — perhaps the worst time of year to strand customers.
“If it had happened in July, it would have been one thing. But they were the Grinch airline that stole Christmas,” said airline consultant Michael Boyd.
So will they forgive the airline and return Southwest customers who were affected by the service meltdown? Many already have.
During last month’s earnings call, Southwest said that of passengers affected by the issue, who were compensated with 25,000 bonus points in their frequent flyer accounts, 25% have already booked flights for future travel on the airline .
Some of those passengers are using points for travel. Others pay cash for their tickets.
“I take that as a sign of confidence that customers understand,” Ryan Green, Southwest’s chief commercial officer, told investors last month. “They understand that we messed up there. We did everything we could to make it right, and that 1/4 of them have already booked future trips to Southwest.”
Here are some reasons why experts think the vast majority of Southwest customers can forgive the airline:
Southwest responded well after the merger: The airline did a pretty good job of refunding fees for canceled flights, giving bonus frequent flyer points and compensating fliers for their out-of-pocket expenses. This allowance covers not only the cost of travel on other airlines, but also rental cars, hotels and meals.
It had a good reputation in the market: Before the crisis, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows Southwest had the lowest complaint rate per passenger, just 1 per 100,000 passengers, compared with 2.24 for Delta, 4.1 for United and 4.6 for American. All of this is helping it cope with customer backlash.
Lack of other options: Southwest is America’s largest domestic airline and specializes in somewhat smaller secondary airports. For a passenger who prefers Chicago Midway Airport or Dallas Love Field to those cities’ major airports of O’Hare and Dallas Fort Worth, there really is no alternative to flying Southwest. And this is especially true if you want direct flights instead of changing planes at one of those other airlines’ hubs.
And the fact that other airlines have suffered their own travel woes in recent years is probably working in Southwest’s favor, too, even if those other mergers were just as massive and ill-timed as Southwest’s.
