With Southwest Airlines in shambles, its phone systems are melting down

Like yesterday, Southwest Airlines again leads the world in most flight cancellations. They are not just short flyers slope agents. With half of the airline’s flights delayed – yet again – customers across the country need help rebooking. Today the airline’s phone system chose to melt down.

In order to address the problems with the phone system, Southwest has effectively stopped taking phone calls.

one call center agent offers,

In all of this madness the phone servers are down, I can’t hear my customers and many agents don’t show up today because they don’t want to deal with abuse from customers who keep calling because we can’t help them. They are offering 3 times the pay tomorrow and 1.5 times the pay for the next few weeks.

Southwest offers their phone agents Three times the pay To help get rid of the current mess with customers.

Here’s how the airline describes the confluence events that led to their holiday meltdown. Nowhere is it mentioned that there are not enough staff.

It was a bad day for flying. Delta has canceled 22% of its major operations so far today. United canceled 12%. Alaska, whose center in Seattle was in shambles, scrapped 30%. American Airlines was a relative bright spot with only 3% cancellations (but 25% delays) on the main line. However, it was no more difficult than the southwest.

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