The U.S. Division of Transportation on Monday introduced a $140-million wonderful towards Southwest Airways following the corporate’s disastrous 2022 journey season that was highlighted by hundreds of canceled flights and thousands and thousands of annoyed fliers.
The wonderful, assessed for “quite a few violations of client safety legal guidelines,” was “30 instances bigger than any earlier DOT penalty for client safety violations,” in response to a DOT assertion.
Southwest canceled practically 17,000 flights and stranded greater than 2 million passengers throughout final 12 months’s Christmas and New 12 months’s holidays, in response to DOT.
Through the journey disaster, “Southwest confronted unprecedented operational, volume-related challenges but acted with diligence and in good religion,” the airline mentioned in a press release Monday.
Southwest has put in place “important investments and initiatives that speed up operational resiliency, improve cross-team collaboration and bolster total preparedness for winter operations,” President and Chief Govt Officer Bob Jordan mentioned.
Although it’s arduous to think about a worse final result for air vacationers than final 12 months’s debacle, newly launched knowledge present that passenger complaints filed with the DOT throughout all airways greater than doubled within the first 5 months of 2023 from the identical interval in 2022.
The information, analyzed by the U.S. Public Curiosity Analysis Group, confirmed a 109% year-over-year enhance in complaints towards airways from January by means of Could. The variety of air vacationers elevated 14% within the span.
Greater than a 3rd of the complaints addressed flight scheduling, together with cancellations, delays and points with connections, the information confirmed. A couple of fifth of the complaints associated to issues with refunds.
The third commonest grievance was misplaced or broken objects. These had been related in proportion to complaints from 2022, PIRG famous, however the quantity of complaints elevated dramatically.
A separate doc, the DOT’s Air Journey Client Report, notes that the variety of mishandled baggage jumped in September 2023 to 198,256, with a charge of .53 baggage mishandled for each 100 passengers flying. That is up from 177,304 baggage and a charge of .48 baggage for each 100 passengers in September 2022, in response to the newest DOT knowledge.
The company should modify, as “client complaints aren’t returning to pre-pandemic ranges,” the report states.
Complaints in 2020 reached the highest ranges ever recorded, however 2023’s complete might be considerably larger if the development from January by means of Could continues.
With the Christmas journey season ramping up, fines like these imposed on Southwest Airways might give vacationers some consolation.
“If airways fail their passengers, we are going to use the complete extent of our authority to carry them accountable,” mentioned U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.