Air travel has never been something that many people -- at least those not flying in first or business class -- particularly enjoy.
At best, you're crammed into a tiny, uncomfortable seat that ultimately does its job. At worst, your flight gets canceled, takes off late, or runs into some other problem.
Everyone has at least heard of, if not experienced, flights being stuck on the tarmac with passengers trapped in their seats.
DON'T MISS: Southwest Airlines Wants To Give You More Perks
Even when flying goes pretty well, it's still fairly unpleasant. That actually sets a low bar for airlines. Passengers expect a certain level of misery, so pushing them to their breaking point actually takes a lot of work.
For most people to get mad at an airline to the point that they complain to the U.S. Department of Transportation, something fairly terrible has to happen.
That's a challenge that even super-discount, no-frills airlines like Frontier (ULCC) and Spirit (SAVE) rarely meet, but in December Southwest Airlines (LUV) rose to the occasion.
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Southwest Airlines Made People Very Angry
The DOT puts out a monthly report called the Air Travel Consumer Report. That document was actually delayed from its normal release schedule because the agency had to process 16,876 complaints from December – the third-highest-total in the history of the report.
That’s not the bad news for Southwest. The problem for the airline -- which stranded tens of thousands of people over the holidays when its systems could not handle weather-related rescheduling -- was that the complaints were not at all evenly spread out between air carriers.
“The number of December complaints was nearly four times the amount reported in December 2021 (4,253 complaints) and was up 155.1% from November 2022. More than half (51.7%) of December's complaints were against Southwest Airlines,” Travel Weekly reported.
Roughly 82% of all complaints were against U.S. air carriers. Cancellations and delays were overwhelmingly the most-complained-about problems.
Southwest’s holiday meltdown, as it has come to be known, did not involve only flight cancellations and delays. The bigger problem was the airline's inability to reschedule passengers, leaving them stranded with no way to get to their destinations and no timetable for when the problems might be fixed.
The only other two months with more DOT complaints were April and May 2020, essentially the beginning of the covid pandemic.
Southwest Tries to Make It Right
While the public may not immediately put its trust back in Southwest, the airline has taken a number of steps to ensure a similar problem never recurs.
This includes spending $1.3 billion upgrading everything from its scheduling system to its weather-tracking platforms and its deicing capabilities.
The airline shared a number of ways it plans to improve its operations at the recent J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference.
“Crew Optimization software has been recently upgraded to address a functional gap that was revealed in December. Crew Scheduling and Customer phone systems also will be upgraded for better surge protection and efficiency during periods of high call volumes,” the airline shared.
That’s just one small piece of a puzzle that also includes hiring more people and investing massive amounts in software and hardware to keep its planes flying.
The airline has also been working on what it describes as “cross-team collaboration.”
“Actions have already been taken to align various Network Planning and Network Operations Control Teams under one senior leader for better execution of operational plans," the airline added.
"Additionally, data on early-indicator dashboards has been enhanced to highlight key operational metrics, and the airline will better integrate aircraft and crew recovery decision-making and optimization.”
