Here are some crazy things I have encountered.
Rental cars in our city are sold out. Same for cities within two hours drive. The websites will accept reservations, but when you show up, they tell you they have no cars. Because it's the holidays, busses and trains are booked and any flights on other airlines are crazy expensive ($1500 one way). When you are stuck in a city, you are probably truly stuck there.
Your only hope of dealing with SWA is waiting in line at check-in or a gate. The phones don't work. Online chat doesn't work. The lines are long and slow.
Luggage is hit or miss. If your bag was pulled off a plane, you might find it in baggage claim, but most bags are on a plane or on the tarmac. SWA told us it may be 30 days until we get our luggage. They won't pull bags for people, and the agents that we spoke with acknowledged and felt for people who may have had medicine in them.
The workers are as befuddled as the passengers. They have been very nice and as helpful as they can be, but their phones haven't been working and their computer systems have been slow.
On Twitter, someone posted a video of the announcement at Houston Hobby about no flights until the 31st and people keeping their receipts for hotels, etc. They said the same thing at our airport.
People in the airport are so mad. It's unfortunate because it's not constructive. But tempers are flaring, and frustrated passengers who finally get to talk to an agent end up slowing things down because they spend a lot of time trying to hear something they're not going to hear.
Ultimately, this is an operations failure. Companies talk a lot about accountability, but the typical way you hold people accountable is by replacing them with more capable people. It will be very interesting to see if any executives leave SWA over this. If not, I would say that no one was held accountable.
To close, my family and I are fine. This is but a minor speed bump in life. No one is dying, and we will see how SWA takes care of the extra expenditures. Some people aren't so lucky. They have meds in bags, or finances that don't allow them to spend multiple nights in a hotel and get Uber trips for a few days. Hopefully, SWA takes care of them, too.