All 737 MAX 8 aircrafts were pulled out of the sky on March 13, which affected American, United and Southwest. While American and United have handled the situation quite well and was able to re-accommodate most customers, Southwest has just been doing an awful job handling the situation. Ultimately, they have been re-adjusting their schedule just a few weeks at a time and many times canceling flights at the last minute. This has left many customers stranded due to Spring Break flights being completely sold out. I personally have had two flights canceled and with one of them they actually separated my family to fly on two separate days — no thank you! I also have been less than pleased with their customer care department. They are ultimately saying “sorry, but it is what it is”. Thus far, Southwest has not showed me their typical customer friendly side. And it seems like this has been a common situation amongst many passengers.
Fortunately though, Southwest just announced that they will be adjusting their schedule through August 5th. While some passengers who already have flights scheduled for this summer might be impacted, they will have plenty of notice to change their flight to hopefully another flight that works. Or, worst case scenario, cancel their flight with Southwest and re-book on another airline. This is much better than giving customers less than two weeks notice where purchasing a flight on another airline can be astronomically expensive last minute and other Southwest flights are simply sold out.
If you have a Southwest flight booked between now and August, I would absolutely recommend double checking on your flight to see if it is one of the flights affected.
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Fortunately I have avoided all 737-800’s and Maxs due to the new horrible seats so I’m all on 737-700’s. These will eventually get the new seats I’m sure and then I’ll have to move airlines. I hope they take their time. I agree that approach they have taken is disappointing as Southwest always has the best customer service by far in my opinion.
I didn’t know there was a 787 Max. Do you have photos of this plane?
Late last night I received an email from Southwest, letting me know that my morning n/s AUS-SFO flight had been changed The new departure time was ~11 HOURS LATER than the original schedule, arriving at SFO just 15 minutes before midnight.
There are several other AUS-SFO routings available during the morning and afternoon, so I wondered why the computer had come up with such a weird choice. Then I noticed that the flight selected by the computer was the only direct (with a stop in LAS, but no plane change) one…all other options had a plane change somewhere (PHX, SAN, etc.).
I was able to change to a more favorable itinerary online at the special URL (http://www.southwest.com/rebook3) provided in the email from Southwest without difficulty.
I guess the moral of this tale is to be sure to carefully read any schedule change emails from SW, because you may not like what they give you.