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Southwest Airlines was the focus of national news reports about travel nightmares over the just-ended holidays for obvious reasons: The carrier canceled the most flights, stranded the most passengers over the longest period of time and earned repeated chastisement from officials in President Joe Biden’s administration.
But the story of what went wrong at facilities across the country – including Denver International Airport, whose problems continue to linger (around 300 flights were canceled January 2, with at least another 24 deep-sixed by mid-day yesterday, January 3) – was more complicated than that, as my family and I learned through personal experience.
Our yuletide festivities were upended thanks to a series of problems with a different airline, and my return to Colorado on Southwest actually took place as planned – though not before several glitches and gaffes resulted in plans being changed and changed and changed again. And when the flight finally took off, it was – irony alert – nearly half-empty.
Here’s what happened:
Months ago, my clan – wife Deb, son Nick, his partner Justin, daughter Ellie, her significant other Nick N., and daughter Lora – arranged to congregate in Southern California for Christmas, but our departure dates were varied. Ellie and Nick N. left days early in order to make stops in Phoenix and San Diego, while Nick and Justin scheduled a December 23 flight to Los Angeles on Delta. Meanwhile, Deb, Lora and I were booked on a direct Delta flight to Los Angeles International Airport on December 24. But the whole crew was supposed to rendezvous at an Airbnb on Christmas Eve in Fullerton, California, not far from Disneyland, where we had passes for December 26 and 27, so we could spend the next day together.
Or at least that’s what we thought.
Because Ellie and Nick N. had their own car, they arrived in Fullerton as scheduled. As for Nick and Justin, their Delta departure was moved up to December 22, the day an epic cold snap hit Denver, but they still managed to get out of town, albeit after a two-hour delay. But Deb, Lora and I were informed that our Christmas Eve flight was canceled.
That’s when the scramble drill began. We found an alternate route on United departing from Yampa Valley Regional Airport in Routt County, which serves Steamboat Springs, and were ready to drive the three hours to the site. However, Delta refused to pay for rebooking on another airline because the delay was supposedly weather-related, even though the bad conditions were back east at that point and nowhere close to where we wanted to head. The only other option was a Delta flight from Colorado Springs to Salt Lake City on Christmas Day, followed by a brief wait prior to taking another plane to Orange County – and we booked it.
That evening, though, the Salt Lake-to-Orange County leg was canceled, too, and the next flight to the area – Long Beach, specifically – didn’t leave until late on Christmas night, necessitating around a seven-hour layover. So we switched our reservations again and wound up spending the lion’s share of the day in the Salt Lake airport. But at least we had a religious experience of a sort: An airline employee essentially commandeered a bus transporting us to the terminal in order to tell us his born-again experience.
It was riveting.
We arrived in Long Beach late that evening and were able to spend a few minutes with our family before sacking out – and the next several days went well. But even though the vacation seemed to be back on the rails, a shadow lingered over our fun: Deb and I were supposed to return to DIA on Southwest late on Friday, December 30 (Lora returned earlier), and the airline was still nixing flights days after other carriers had more or less returned to normal operations.
Then, on Thursday morning, our worst fears were realized: Deb checked the Southwest website and saw that our flight had been canceled. In response, we arranged to hang on to our rental car for an extra day so that we could drive back to Colorado – an eighteen-hour trek along old Route 66 necessitated by a huge storm over the mountains. The car-rental company, National, gouged us for an extra $300 for a single day, and if we didn’t make it back to Denver by 5 p.m. on Saturday, that amount would be doubled – and that’s not to mention the expense of paying for a hotel room in Gallup, New Mexico, at roughly the midway point of our journey. But we were hopeful Southwest would pay for these expenses.
Then came another twist. That evening, we saw a newscast report that Southwest had finally pulled its shit together and would be up and running again on Friday – and when Deb checked the airline’s website again, our flight was back on. She called the airline to confirm, and after a mere forty minutes or so on hold, an operator said the flight was definitely scheduled; she guessed that the cancellation notice was an error of some sort.
Early on Friday, the Southwest website still showed the flight, and we spent the day hoping that it would actually take off as pledged – which it did. But when 40 percent of its seats were vacant, we couldn’t help but wonder if others had learned incorrectly that it had been canceled and headed home using other methods without discovering the truth.
If that was the case, will Southwest reimburse their additional costs? Or will the airline refuse to do so because the flight actually happened? We may never know – but we sure hope those folks experience a belated Christmas miracle.
