Just got through flying SWA to Denver, holy smokes what a cluster that place is! Apparently they are severely understaffed on ground crew or the management is just bad. 1 1/2 hour wait on tarmac due to lack of gate due to lack of crew, then 3 hour wait to get baggage. The SWA carousels were packed with luggage but they had two older ladies trying to help with 3 carousels and bags were everywhere! They even made an announcement saying the did not have any drivers to get the bags to baggage claim.

They had on the board approximately 36 flights listed and 16 had been cancelled due to personnel shortages, 6 others said delayed, at least 2 hours or more. All other airlines combined had 4 cancellations.

Return was better however they left 1 bag behind in Denver and yes we checked in at 4:30 AM with a 6:05 AM flight so plenty of time and 3 other bags made it fine.

Denver is huge for SWA they really need to get that fixed fast!

Not happy with all the Southwest issues now that work travel is starting up for '22. That sounds ridiculous at DEN.

my work trip this week got canceled, but the last couple times I've flown SWA (in december), it was a 45+ minute wait for my bag at ABIA.

Send a comment via their customer service page on the website. We had issues at HOU a couple weeks ago and they sent us a $150 voucher for the trouble.

DEN is a complete mess right now. It's a staffing issue. I would avoid it if at all possible.

I've been flying out of Denver quite regularly on UA and it's been fine. Doesn't make me very confident about my first SWA flight in awhile next month. Although I think it he last time I checked a bag was 10+ years ago.

Have others also experienced this? Trying to determine if this is a consistent issue at DEN as I am scheduled to ski at Breckenridge the first weekend in March. Was gonna fly Southwest & check my skis, but having second thoughts now.

I'm SWA first weekend in February. Skiing winter park. Will report back.

The entire industry is having issues right now but SWA is on a whole nother plane (pun intended), just not the airline anymore that I grew up with and flew so much over the years for work. I've started flying AA more this past year and I don't see a good reason to switch back.

Been flying SWA and have had minimal issues. Today's flight to Midland was on time, no problem. I'm flying through Denver on Thursday, so y'all have me worried...

esd19 said:

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Have others also experienced this? Trying to determine if this is a consistent issue at DEN as I am scheduled to ski at Breckenridge the first weekend in March. Was gonna fly Southwest & check my skis, but having second thoughts now.

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SWA specifically in DEN has been a mess for several days. Massive staffing issues there.

Flying through there with connection to Steamboat end of February from HOU. With kids…so better have no problems with connections!

I read a $15k bonus United is paying for ramp workers

Been reading more about the pains of flying in/out of Denver today. Most cancellations for an origin or destination in the world yesterday. Up there again today.
https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/yesterday

Read about a United flight that landed and had to wait 2.5 hours for a gate. Baggage woes. Cancellations. Widespread staffing issues.

Ive got 5 flights through Denver over the next few weeks. Legitimately concerned now as connections get to take the gamble twice each trip.

At MAF now and behold the cancellation.


The little convenience store in the terminal is shut down here too. I don't think I've ever seen that. Makes a lame airport even worse.

Over Christmas I had 4 flights on SWA and two more over Thanksgiving. 5/6 flights had issues. I've been pretty loyal to them over the course of a decade. I reached out to CS, and all they said was sorry.

None of the issues were life threatening nor anything like that. Hour + wait for baggage, issue with boarding pass delaying A list boarding until after B group (frustrating because I paid extra money for that), no entertainment of 2 4+ hour flights. I have a ton of points through them, which they obviously don't care about, but it's really frustrating. It does truly have me questioning the loyalty I've had with them.

Bulldog73 said:

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Over Christmas I had 4 flights on SWA and two more over Thanksgiving. 5/6 flights had issues. I've been pretty loyal to them over the course of a decade. I reached out to CS, and all they said was sorry.

None of the issues were life threatening nor anything like that. Hour + wait for baggage, issue with boarding pass delaying A list boarding until after B group (frustrating because I paid extra money for that), no entertainment of 2 4+ hour flights. I have a ton of points through them, which they obviously don't care about, but it's really frustrating. It does truly have me questioning the loyalty I've had with them.

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COVID policies.

It's one of the reasons why the quarantine period was reduced from 10 days to 5 days. That was almost solely due to airline lobbying because they are getting their asses handed to them.

There is probably not another industry in the world that has the people planning complexity that an airline does and especially SWA since they are mostly point to point. It's a complete domino effect in a bad way when you can't get field a crew somewhere in the schedule because someone suddenly tests positive and you have to sit out.

Flew DEN to LIH last week with no issues. We have TSA PreCheck which helps alleviate the security pibes issues, but overall no issues w boarding baggage etc

Had a layover at DIA after Christmas coming back from Vacation.

We had 5 gate changes in the 30 mins leading up to boarding because outgoing planes were not able to get out of the way for the plane we were about to get on. They were all either late in boarding or missing crew.

Once they got our plane to the gate, they loaded the luggage and then pulled it all off. The crew for the flight was on another plane that was stuck on the taxiway.

I am assuming we were REALLY close to being cancelled, but they eventually put the luggage back on the plane and we took off 2 hours late.

It was a United flight and flying back to a United hub (IAH) probably helped us out a bit. If we were going somewhere else, I bet we would have been cancelled.

Total non-issue. Flight in was early. Flight out pushed on time. Airport seemed to be running smoothly.

This isn't new for SW. Denver seems to be one of the epicenter for their issues since early this year. We had a flight from Denver to Houston in June get cancelled 12 hours ahead of time during one of their staffing shortages (even though they called it "weather related"). Our flight to Denver in early November was nearly an hour late getting in because we sat on the tarmac for about 45 minutes waiting for a plane waiting on crew to push back from our gate. They seem to have an issue on nearly every flight through Denver these days. It is getting as bad as going through DFW on United.

B said:

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no entertainment of 2 4+ hour flights. I have a ton of points through them, which they obviously don't care about, but it's really frustrating. It does truly have me questioning the loyalty I've had with them.

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This was me 4-5 years ago. Wife and myself had 2-300k points combined with SW and companion pass once or twice over previous 10 years from that point, but once we had 2 boys in 2014-2016, I started to want to use the United club, and it was around that time that United changed it to where you had to be flying united to use the club. That was enough to make me want to switch and get the club card.

I started thinking, what kind of perks am I really getting with SW? There is no club, even if there was a club, I can't chill in it until last minute because my family doesn't have assigned seats. When I fly solo, there is no upgrading to a better seat/class, something I gett often with United now that I fly them regularly, and I don't even have status. Sometimes I just check the upgrade fee and it's $50 or less I do it. A meal and few free drinks offsets that easily.

SW simply relied on free bags and no change fees for so long which was huge compared to everyone else, but now with branded cards giving anyone free bags, and NO ONE doing change fees anymore (for now, of course that could revert back), they really don't offer anything special.

I think I'm done with SW for good. My points have dwindled down as I randomly use them for better pricing or timing than United. Now we have ~300k United points and not looking back. Having club access with kids (or any time) is a game changer.

I had the worst airline experience of my life with SW in Denver 5 years ago. It is the only time I've flown SW and will never do it again.

Taking the last flight out on SWA of IAH the first weekend of Feb with a layover in Denver and then a round trip SWA to Denver the first weekend in March first flight in last flight out in one day. Yall got me worried. Both trips will probably just be carryons though.

i'd rather fly united. Had status on them for a long time, and i have a crapload of points. Unfortunately (for my flight status), my territory for work changed and SW is the only carrier that isn't a complete pain in the ass to get to where i need to go. United has options, but they are usually 3x the price and the flight times really suck.

United used to have terrible customer service and after they took over Continental, I moved to SW due to superior customer service. I have had companion pass for 3 years and have several hundred thousand SW points, but this iteration of SW is making me look again at United. The last couple of times I have flown United, the experience has been fine and they were not feeding us BS about weather delays while cancelling flights with clear blue skies at both airports involved. I am ashamed of what SW management has turned the airline into. The shareholders really should demand that the board make significant changes to the senior management that is driving these decisions. They may make short term financial sense, but they are killing what was a stellar reputation, and it will take many years to undo the damage that has already been done.

Quote:

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United used to have terrible customer service

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My family doesn't travel much (at least via air). The last 2 times we have, we had to contact United customer service for something.

In both cases, we had to make changes to the trips which were booked with miles....and the flights originally chosen were the ones that cost the lowest amount of miles.

In both cases, the rep on the phone was very apologetic (for something that was not their fault at all) and after things were finalized, we ended up getting refunded for almost half the miles.

In the most recent case, we switched from flights to Boston to flights to Montana. The Montana flights should have cost us a bunch more miles. We ended up getting 47,000 miles back and my family of 4 flew RT to Montana and back for a total of 53,000 miles.

I have no idea how that happened other than my wife has the best of luck talking to customer service.

CDub06 said:

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Been reading more about the pains of flying in/out of Denver today. Most cancellations for an origin or destination in the world yesterday. Up there again today.
https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/yesterday

Read about a United flight that landed and had to wait 2.5 hours for a gate. Baggage woes. Cancellations. Widespread staffing issues.

Ive got 5 flights through Denver over the next few weeks. Legitimately concerned now as connections get to take the gamble twice each trip.

At MAF now and behold the cancellation.


The little convenience store in the terminal is shut down here too. I don't think I've ever seen that. Makes a lame airport even worse.

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Midland is a space port? What planets can you fly to?

Aggie87 said:

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CDub06 said:

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Been reading more about the pains of flying in/out of Denver today. Most cancellations for an origin or destination in the world yesterday. Up there again today.
https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/yesterday

Read about a United flight that landed and had to wait 2.5 hours for a gate. Baggage woes. Cancellations. Widespread staffing issues.

Ive got 5 flights through Denver over the next few weeks. Legitimately concerned now as connections get to take the gamble twice each trip.

At MAF now and behold the cancellation.


The little convenience store in the terminal is shut down here too. I don't think I've ever seen that. Makes a lame airport even worse.

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Midland is a space port? What planets can you fly to?

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people in midland love to talk about the one time the space shuttle landed there. they are proud of that little airport.

CDub06 said:

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Total non-issue. Flight in was early. Flight out pushed on time. Airport seemed to be running smoothly.

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Was this an outlier? Or things seeming to be more smooth in general?

I've only had a couple of minor inconveniences through all my southwest travels the last 2 years. But they always made it right for me.

Things seem relatively normal aside from the closed shops and restaurants throughout most airports.

I'm going BWI to LAX in a couple weeks and have to connect somewhere. Thanks to this thread I'm choosing a slightly longer layover in Kansas City instead of the shorter one in Denver.

I travel weekly for work. I've avoided flying Southwest for years. No plus for me to fly them.

CDub06 said:

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I've only had a couple of minor inconveniences through all my southwest travels the last 2 years. But they always made it right for me.

Things seem relatively normal aside from the closed shops and restaurants throughout most airports.

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Me too, hope it continues now that I'm A list preferred with a Companion pass. Don't want to start over with another airline.

I think I saw the centurion lounge at DIA closes at 5 in the afternoon now, presumably due to staff shortages as well.

esd19 said:

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Have others also experienced this? Trying to determine if this is a consistent issue at DEN as I am scheduled to ski at Breckenridge the first weekend in March. Was gonna fly Southwest & check my skis, but having second thoughts now.

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I think they're flying in/out of COS again, might be worth investigating. Don't know if the staffing issue there is better or not. A little bit longer drive going up the back way but often about same time wise or sometimes even quicker due to the ****show that is I-70