Yes all New York airports are congested. Same with Chicago and almost every other major airport. Delays are more than expected and cancellations do happen. The interesting and alarming statistic is the amount of cancellations southwest has compared to the other major airlines that use the same exact airports in aggregate. 4-5% cancellations compared to 0-2% according to FlightAware. The other airlines tend to eventually take off. Southwest does not. That seems like they are overbooking their actual flight capacity. Essentially they honor their flight eventually taking off way less than any other major airline. Sad because the actual front line employees at southwest are generally awesome. It’s their corporate office who designs a flight schedule that isn’t obtainable. Can’t even use the spirt excuse that they charge cheaper fairs. For most part out of Chicago they are notably more expensive than the legacy airlines
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Over past couple of days I updated a quick spread sheet. It’s percent of total cancellations of southwest over southwest plus American united and delta. I update this spread sheet in the afternoon so if anything totals for every airline could be higher. I chose those 3 because they have national reach like southwest. Less prone to skew based on georgraphy (aka weather). basically I communicated this customer service and she goes well we cancelled other flights in the north east and I replied but yes others did not at the same rate. Blank answer. yes I know they legally aren’t doing anything. I have no recourse and I idiotly booked flights until September and can’t get a refund. It’s more a frustrated long time loyal southwest fan that is upset they prefer the short term bottom line instead of decreasing flight schedule and making sure they have extra planes. Yes they are point to point but not as much as they used to be. They don’t call them hubs but essentially mdw, vegas, Dallas love are hubs in practice luckily southwest never practiced this but this is a system wide issue with planes that is similar to overbooking an individual flight where they do have to pay compensation like other airlines used.
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For some reason this won’t let me put urls in here but if you google the phrase “flight aware cancellations” it shows up first in google search. FlightAware aggregates all flight cancellations and delays by every airline across the world. The data only goes back a couple of days but FlightAware said they have data that goes back years. I got used to using the website thanks to all the cancellations and flight delays by southwest I’ve indured since the 737max grounding. obviously it impacted them the most because they rely on 737 but they said they removed and adjusted their schedule because of it. Seems to me they haven’t. Other large national carriers have 2% or lower cancellation. They seem to be average 4-5% which weirdly is about how many planes they are 737maxs they are short. Seems to me they said one thing and didn’t do it.
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For some reason this won’t let me put urls in here but if you google the phrase “flight aware cancellations” it shows up first in google search. FlightAware aggregates all flight cancellations and delays by every airline across the world. The data only goes back a couple of days but FlightAware said they have data that goes back years. I got used to using the website thanks to all the cancellations and flight delays by southwest I’ve indured since the 737max grounding. obviously it impacted them the most because they rely on 737 but they said they removed and adjusted their schedule because of it. Seems to me they haven’t. Other large national carriers have 2% or lower cancellation. They seem to be average 4-5% which weirdly is about how many planes they are 737maxs they are short. Seems to me they said one thing and didn’t do it.
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Same exact experience except I've been A list for the past several years. Treated me like dirt and had to spend an extra night for $200 and an $80 uber laguardia and gave me a $200 voucher. I tried to ask for a refund for all my future flights but by the letter of the law all tickets are non-refundable even if they can't deliver the service. Used to love the company but what they are doing is unethical but not illegal by how current laws are set up. The grey line they are also exploiting is weather. They now just straight up cancel flights and don't even attempt to delay. There is no good faith and they are then not financially responsible. Essentially they are free to cancel the flight if any potential weather and then divert that plane to other parts of their network. As I will show below they purposely have a larger schedule than what is reasonabily addressed by their current amount of planes even though they said they have adjusted their schedule due to 737 Max groundings. My recent flight every other plane left Newark that night. Some delayed several hours but Southwest was the only one to cancel Newark to Midway flights. It didn't even rain for more than 10 minutes. This leaves us the customer high and dry and they don't comp us anythign except the cost of the ticket. I trust a ticket scalper more than Southwest to deliver on the service. I posted the data below and trying to get full year data from flightaware.com but this seems system wide. I compiled last week of stats from flightaware.com and its staggering. I have compiled a list of reports from national newspapers such as NYT andUSAToday. They have more resources than a small guy like me and you and hopefully they publish an article about Southwest's unethitcal practices. Cancelled Flights 6/1/2019 6/2/2019 6/3/2019 6/4/2019 6/5/2019 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Southwest 172 167 111 187 123 American 151 81 8 57 14 Delta 0 5 6 7 4 United 6 12 2 7 2 Total Cancelled Flights 329 265 127 258 143 LUV's total 52.28% 63.02% 87.40% 72.48% 86.01% Delayed Flights 6/1/2019 6/2/2019 6/3/2019 6/4/2019 6/5/2019 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Southwest 371 945 350 American 404 831 200 Delta 205 300 77 United 288 600 93 Total Delayed Flights 1268 2676 720 LUV's total 29.26% 35.31% 48.61%
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