There really should be laws or regulations that fine airlines for this kind of behavior and compensate passengers. Reliability failures that have that much impact on people need more consequences than just seeking another airline next time.
See EU 261: https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017825538-EU-2...
See Indonesia: https://www.balidiscovery.com/delayed-flights-know-your-righ...
AFAIK they still need to make sure you get food and a place to sleep, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Compensation_Regulation
i'd like to see all airlines required to provide the sort of compensation that southwest is providing here
Further Southwest famously does not have interline or code sharing agreements with other carriers that would allow their agents to rebook passengers on a different airline. This is yet another detail of Southwest operations that is exacerbating the situation.
Instead what people do is find the lowest fare possible, all other considerations be damned. It’s not like this is the first time this has happened to SW.
Southwest did lose 10% of its market value overnight, so it seems the market is punishing them. Given how much executive compensation is in stock, a lot of senior level folks at Southwest are likely feeling some pain (or, least, as much pain as any very rich person ever feels).
> Instead what people do is find the lowest fare possible, all other considerations be damned.
That's an over-simplification. Yes, passengers are very price sensitive. But whenever I talk to friends and family about travel, it's become increasingly clear that they factor predicted quality of service in to their choice.
I don't fly United and try to avoid American. I'm certain that many many people will hesitate to fly on Southwest after this. People aren't stupid and no one wants to roll the dice on an entire vacation just to save twenty bucks.
A couple of VW execs went to prison and it cost the company 30 billion, that feels like getting hit hard enough by governments. What more do you want?
I can only hope the car I replaced it with also cheated on the emissions, because I'd love to sell it back for more than it's worth, too.
Yes, you can choose a more expensive airline but let’s not pretend Delta, United etc don’t also have huge delays and failures from time to time. Up until now Southwest’s reputation really hasn’t been bad, they’re no Frontier. No matter, there should be avenues for compensation.
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/at...
Presumably the consequence of regulators making canceling and delaying flights expensive is that airlines pay more to reduce the likelihood of that happening and fares go up as a result.
Whether that's good or bad is a matter of perspective I guess. Regulators could implement a lot of rules that would make flying more pleasant. But prices would go up.
There’s a reason we give airlines a pass for unsafe weather: because we don’t want them killing people.
The point is that it is irresponsible to be running so lean that their entire system is tightly coupled like this, and we need to make doing so completely unprofitable to airlines.
The way I read it, you kind of are, just without saying it out loud:
> we could just make airlines always liable for any situation where they fail to get you to where they said they were going to get you by when they said they were going to get you. Like literally any service that is not delivered as promised.
What incentives does that set up when terrible (or even questionable) weather exists at the departure or destination airports or widespread en route?
This is a pretty huge incentive to get it right, and you can be sure every other airline will be looking into how they can prevent something similar from happening to them over the next few months.