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Gearing Up For This Holiday Travel Weekend

AlanKasher
Employee
Employee

Our in-house Meteorology Team which resides within the NOC provides real-time weather updates to help us proactively navigate any revisions to our service_.jpg

 

We know many have experienced disruptions to travel plans and that Customer Service wait times are higher than usual. If your plans were affected, please visit https://swa.is/ChangeFlight to explore self-service solutions.

We have heard from many of you who are frustrated with our flight schedule reliability and irregular operations. And we owe you a better understanding of what’s causing these disruptions and how we are working through them to offer you a better product.

We’ve been experiencing relentless summer storms across many parts of our country, including some of our busier airports, which has introduced a greater amount of delay than we traditionally see this time of year. This has impacted the entire airline industry.
 

Once our schedule is disrupted with irregular operations, we move quickly to recover our service and get Customers to their destinations. As we continue rebuilding our network to pre-pandemic levels, we currently have fewer frequencies between cities than in previous summer schedules. With fewer flight options between cities and high load factors, it’s more difficult to reschedule Customers and to reposition Crews when things don’t go as planned.


We were prepared for an increase in travel demand for the summer; however, irregular operations can disrupt even the best-laid plans. We have Teams across our organization working together with a continuous focus on serving you and our People. Here are some of the steps we are taking to improve your travel experience:

  • Our Network Operations Control (NOC) is closely monitoring our operations 24/7. The Team is focused on being as proactive as possible when we are forced to adjust our flight schedule based on weather or other conditions that might impact travel, so Customers have time to make alternate travel plans.

  • Our in-house Meteorology Team, which resides within the NOC, continues to provide real-time weather updates to help us proactively navigate any revisions to our service and allow us to get information to our Customers as quickly as possible.

  • Our Tech Ops Team is laser-focused on safely and efficiently making every possible aircraft available so we have extra aircraft that can help us recover our flight schedule.   

  • We’ve updated our Customer communication to emphasize the importance of arriving at the airport early during this busy travel time.


We want you to have as much confidence in your travel plans as we can possibly give you, and we are working to ensure we deliver the experience you expect from Southwest.

​​​​​​​Thank you, once again, to our Customers and to our Southwest Employees, as we take to the sky this holiday weekend to celebrate Independence Day together. We are committed to continuing to keep everyone informed on specific actions we’re taking to make sure we get you to your travel destinations this summer.

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