Chicago Midway International Airport is filled with passengers trying to sift through and find their luggage after a flurry of travel disruptions erupted in the lead-up to the Christmas holiday. NBC 5’s Patrick Fazio reports.
Thursday in Chicago, with a high of 55 degrees, the snow and ice has melted, and the roads are clear.
But inside the Southwest Terminal at Midway Airport, many travelers are still struggling to get to their final destinations -- and locate their bags -- after last weekend's severe winter weather, combined with "scheduling issues," led to thousands of canceled flights and thousands of passengers, crew members and pieces of luggage stranded across the country.
Over the past week, Southwest Airlines has apologized for its "unacceptable" operational challenges, with CEO Bob Jordan saying the company plans to "double down" on "existing plans to upgrade systems." And on Thursday, the company said that after several days of operating at only one-third of its scheduled flights, it plans to "return to normal operations with minimal disruptions on Friday, Dec. 30."
But the travel chaos at airports remains.
As of Thursday, at least 2,300 Southwest flights across the country had been canceled. At airports, seas of unclaimed suitcases pile up across baggage claims, and travelers says they are unable to get in touch with customer service.
"It's terrible," one Southwest traveler at Midway told NBC 5 earlier in the week as she attempted to search for her family's missing luggage. "There's no communication. We've been here for over three hours this morning, no communication whatsoever."
Tuesday, Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilot Association called the situation "disgraceful" and a "failure at every level," adding that the issue, which boils down to outdated software and infrastructure, is one that employees have experienced this issue for several years.
What Southwest Airline Says Happened
In a statement to NBC 5 Chicago Monday, Southwest blamed the "lingering effects" of a winter storm and scheduling problems for the reason hundreds of customers' flights were canceled during the post-holiday travel rush.
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"We are not having staffing issues, but we had experienced problems connecting flight crews to their scheduled aircraft. It is a scheduling issue, not a staffing issue," the spokesperson said.
Shortly after that statement to NBC 5, the airline issued a public apology, saying it recognized it had fallen short.
"Our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning," the airline said in a release. "We’re working with safety at the forefront to urgently address wide-scale disruption by rebalancing the airline and repositioning crews and our fleet ultimately to best serve all who plan to travel with us. We were fully staffed and prepared for the approaching holiday weekend when the severe weather swept across the continent, where Southwest is the largest carrier in 23 of the top 25 travel markets in the U.S. This forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity."
"We’re working to reach to customers whose travel plans will change with specific information and their available options," the statement went on to say. "Our employees and crews scheduled to work this holiday season are showing up in every single way. We are beyond grateful for that. Our shared goal is to take care of every single customer with the hospitality and heart for which we’re known. On the other side of this, we’ll work to make things right for those we’ve let down, including our employees."
But as the severe weather across the country began to clear, Southwest continued canceling flights by the thousands.
By Tuesday, Southwest warned that it had made the decision to operate just over a third of its usual schedule for "several days."
Wednesday, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan released a message in the form of a video apology, saying that he was "truly sorry."
"The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well, 99 percent of the time," Jordan said, "but clearly, we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what's happening right now.
Thursday, Southwest said it would be able to "return to normal operations" on Friday.
What Southwest Pilots, Crew Unions Says
According to a release from TWU Local 556, Southwest Airlines Flight Attendant Union of more than 18,000 members, "thousands" of crew members had also been stranded across the country as a result of the massive disruption, with "some forced to sleep on cots in airports, some in hotels without power or water, and far too many working long hours well past acceptable duty days, and more."
"We know the demands of holiday travel," the union's statement goes on to say. "We know winter storms....We know about stepping up and putting in long work hours when we are called to do so; we are flight attendants. But at this point, the many years of failure by management, despite many unions’ demands to modernize, has left flight attendants fatigued, stranded, hungry and cold."
According to Captain Michael Santoro, Vice President of Southwest Airlines Pilot Association, while severe weather was the catalyst, it was "vastly outdated" IT infrastructure and scheduling system that's different from other carriers that led to the meltdown.
"We fly a point-to-point network which can put our crews in the wrong places, without airplanes, mismatched. Our software cant keep track of it," Santoro said Tuesday, adding that the union brings up this problem yearly.
"They never update it. They never invest the money and resources they need to. So, we continue to have these issues," Santoro.
Leaders of Southwest’s labor unions have warned for years that the airline’s crew-scheduling system, which dates to the 1990s, was inadequate, and the CEO acknowledged this week that the technology needs to be upgraded.
The other large U.S. airlines use “hub and spoke” networks in which flights radiate out from a few major or hub airports. That helps limit the reach of disruptions caused by bad weather in part of the country.
Southwest, however, has a “point to point” network in which planes crisscross the country during the day. This can increase the utilization and efficiency of each plane, but problems in one place can ripple across the country and leave crews trapped out of position.
Those issues don't explain all the complaints that stranded travelers made about Southwest, including no ability to reach the airline on the phone and a lack of help with hotels and meals.
Why Are So Many Pieces of Luggage Stranded?
At Chicago's Midway Airport and at airports across the country, luggage has been piling up for nearly a week.
Videos and photos from social media continue to show lines of suitcases snaked along baggage carousels, as weary travelers hope to be reunited with their belongings.
One video posted to TikTok from a Southwest Airlines traveler at Midway Airport says her bags are currently on a journey to a city that was never her destination, despite her flight being canceled. "They wouldn't take out bags off the plane," she says
"Baggage is certainly one of those things that is difficult to recover in the immediate aftermath of an operational disruption," a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines told NBC Chicago Tuesday.
Southwest also told NBC 5 that it was "following standard procedures for returning baggage during irregular operations," and referred customers to its lost or damaged baggage page for assistance. There, the airline states that travelers should let them know within four hours of arriving at their destination that their luggage is missing. People can report the lost luggage in person at a baggage service office.
"Customers can also speak with a representative at the baggage service office in an airport where we operate or contact Southwest customer service, though we are experiencing abnormally high call volumes," a spokesperson told NBC Chicago.
A Thursday statement from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the airline reported to her "significant progress in reuniting lost bags with their passengers nationwide, and Midway ground crews have moved luggage stored in the baggage area to a secure facility while it is transported to its final destination."
Where Things Stand
As Southwest says it is working to return to its full flight schedule by Friday, federal and local officials say they are investigating this week's events.
The incident has triggered a closer look at Southwest operations by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which called the rate of cancellations “unacceptable," and sought to ensure that the carrier was sticking by its obligations to stranded customers.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions, said “meltdown” was the only word he could think of to describe this week’s events at Southwest. He noted that while cancellations across the rest of the industry declined to about 4% of scheduled flights, they remained above 60% at Southwest.
From the high rate of cancellations to customers’ inability to reach Southwest on the phone, the airline’s performance has been unacceptable, Buttigieg said. He vowed to hold the airline accountable and push it to reimburse travelers.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker also said he has been in contact with federal officials regarding the cancellations in recent days, demanding that the airline be held accountable.
“I am closely following the ongoing challenges consumers are dealing with regarding their canceled Southwest flights,” Pritzker said. “I have spoken with Secretary Buttigieg to express the frustration of thousands of Illinoisans who have been stranded and missed out on quality time with their families or who have had to call off work because they couldn’t make it back home.”
A statement from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday read, "I urged Southwest leadership to better communicate what they are offering with their customers. That includes reasonable reimbursement for hotels, meals, car rentals, and flights on competitor airlines for passengers who were booked on any Southwest flight canceled since Christmas Eve."
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