Southwest Airlines issues second apology amidst more chaos

Southwest Airline’s chief commercial officer pledged it would “work day and night” to regain customer trust in a video posted late on Wednesday.
“Making things right starts with a personal apology from me,” Ryan Green said.
More than 10,000 flights have been cancelled by the company since last Friday, when a winter storm hit the US.
Even as other airlines caught up following the travel disruptions, Southwest has struggled to return to a normal flight schedule after the fierce weather swept the country.
The airline has been accused of leaving travelers stranded at airports across the US for hours with no help to re book flights or retrieve missing baggage.
“I’m so happy to have my stuff back,” said Patrick Keane, a traveler who was reunited with his lost luggage after a week without it.
He told reporters, “I’ve just been wearing other people’s clothes.”
Some people said on social media that they had to pay for new, expensive flights, or that they had to find other ways to travel.
According to tracking service FlightAware, nearly all of the total US flight cancellations for the day were from Southwest, which is the largest carrier in the US.
“When will the airline resume a normal flight schedule?” news reporters asked for comment, to which Southwest CEO Bob Jordan replied that the company hoped to be “back on track before next week”.
On Tuesday, the airline released a first apology video in which he made some remarks.
The disruptions have been blamed on the airlines by the bad weather and problems getting crews to new planes.
According to news outlets it was reported that the company told some passengers they would not be able to get on a flight until after New Year’s Day.
“Southwest has said it will honor ‘reasonable requests’ for reimbursement for meals, hotel and alternate transportation for travelers stranded between 24 December and 2 January,” the statement said. “The company will offer flexibility for passengers to make changes to their travel online.”
Southwest Airlines operates in certain cities where other major airlines – including United and American Airlines – have pledged to place price caps on flights to help some passengers.
The US President Joe Biden’s administration has promised to hold the Southwest company accountable and ensure they provide vouchers for travel costs incurred as a result of the cancellations.
“It’s a meltdown,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told “Good Morning America” on ABC News Wednesday, arguing that the company can no longer blame bad weather for the disruptions.
Analysts say that a variety of factors, including the airline’s “point-to-point” system for how it designs its routes, led to the cancellations. They say that this system can leave the airline vulnerable to staffing issues when it comes to delays.