{"id":1791412,"date":"2022-12-31T10:50:03","date_gmt":"2022-12-31T15:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1791412"},"modified":"2022-12-31T10:50:19","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T15:50:19","slug":"southwest-promises-refunds-as-airline-sees-certain-financial-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/southwest-promises-refunds-as-airline-sees-certain-financial-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Promises to Refund Airline Sees \u201cCertain\u201d Financial Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsouthwest-promises-refunds-as-airline-sees-certain-financial-impact%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1791412&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47-->\n<p>WASHINGTON\u2014Southwest Airlines promised to reimburse passengers for expenses such as hotels and car rentals in addition to refunding tickets after it canceled thousands of flights due to a massive winter storm and said there would be a still-undetermined hit to its earnings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019ll certainly be an impact to the fourth quarter,\u201d Ryan Green, Chief Commercial Officer, told reporters on a Thursday call. \u201cWe\u2019re \u2026 working through all the financial elements of this. We\u2019ll share that information when we have all that compiled and are ready to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some analysts estimate the meltdown could shave as much as 9 percent off Southwest\u2019s fourth-quarter earnings.<\/p>\n<p>On the call, company executives declined to estimate how many travelers were affected by disruptions since Dec. 23, 2009.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you had to make alternative travel arrangements like hotels, meals, rental cars, gas for rental car, those will qualify for reimbursements,\u201d Green stated that the repayments would take several weeks.<\/p>\n<p>According to FlightAware data, the carrier cancelled at least 16,000 flights over the last week. This includes roughly 60% of all scheduled flights on Thursday. Southwest claimed Friday cancellations fell dramatically. \u201ceager to return to a state of normalcy\u201d Before the New Year holiday weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Southwest forecasted just two months ago \u201cstrong\u201d Earnings for the fourth quarter were expected to increase by 13 percent to 17%.<\/p>\n<p>Southwest was not the only problem. According to union members, it was due to its outdated technology that failed to map crew to flights. Its point-to\u2013point operational structure also created chaos for schedules.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4953098\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/img.theepochtimes.com\/assets\/uploads\/2022\/12\/30\/Southwest-Airlines-passengers-2-1200x800.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy size-medium wp-image-4953098\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/assets\/themes\/eet\/images\/white.png\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Southwest-Airlines-passengers-2-600x400-1.jpg\" alt=\"Southwest Airlines passengers\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\"   style=\"display:none\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4953098\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Southwest-Airlines-passengers-2-600x400-1.jpg\" alt=\"Southwest Airlines passengers\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/noscript><\/figcaption><\/a> The departures board is overflowing with cancelled and delayed flights following the cancellations by thousands of flights in the United States, led by Southwest. These flights were affected by a major winter storm that struck the country just before Christmas and during Christmas weekend. Southwest was at Dallas Love Field Airport in Dallas, Dec. 28, 2022. (Shelby Tauber\/Reuters)<\/figure>\n<p>The U.S. government has called the airline\u2019s meltdown a system failure and vowed action.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote to Southwest chief Bob Jordan to warn that the company would face consequences if it failed to fulfill its commitments to customers. \u201ccontrollable delays and cancellations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The company is eager to prove that it is changing the course of the disaster.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan apologized for any disruption caused by the storms. He stated that the process of repositioning crew and aircraft was completed. \u201cmanual process\u201d It has been slow and it is now possible to do so. \u201cvolunteer army\u201d made up of salaried employees at the company\u2019s headquarters was helping.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI cannot imagine that this doesn\u2019t drive changes to the plan\u201d to modernize the airline\u2019s operations, Jordan said, adding that technology improvements were under way but it was a \u201clarge and complicated process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Employee unions say they have repeatedly warned Southwest management that the airline\u2019s technology systems badly needed upgrades.<\/p>\n<p>According to Lyn Montgomery of Southwest Airlines Flight Attendants Union (a local 556 of Transport Workers Union), flight attendants have complained about technological problems at the airline for many years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s many ways it could have been avoided,\u201d Montgomery said on Thursday on CNN, saying that could have included commitments by Southwest executives to ensure that IT infrastructure would be able to meet the carrier\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n<p>These comments echo those made by Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. They said that despite many years of union calls for improvement, leadership failed to adjust operations to correct repeated system failures.<\/p>\n<p>The company requested improvements to crew scheduling software and communication tools to allow displaced crews to keep in touch with the company.<\/p>\n<div class=\"author_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"one_author_block round\">\n<div class=\"top_row\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/author-reuters\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/reuters-logo-.jpg\" alt=\"Reuters\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON\u2014Southwest Airlines promised to reimburse passengers for expenses such as hotels and car rentals in addition to refunding tickets after it canceled thousands of flights due to a massive winter storm and said there would be a still-undetermined hit to its earnings. \u201cThere\u2019ll certainly be an impact to the fourth quarter,\u201d Ryan Green, Chief Commercial &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1791415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[12676,11651,5458,4263,5663,12302,11701,3819,7374],"class_list":["post-1791412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-certain","tag-airline","tag-bongino","tag-financial","tag-impact","tag-promises","tag-refund","tag-report","tag-southwest"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1791412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1791415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1791412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1791412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1791412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}