Updated at 5:36 p.m. Dec. 27
The scene at Logan Airport’s Terminal B was outwardly calm Tuesday, with short ticketing and security lines and relatively few posted cancellations. But simmering frustration with Southwest Airlines’ ongoing meltdown lurked just below the surface.
At 11 a.m., Michelle Fallon of Hudson was waiting in the check-in queue to request a refund for her ticket to Tampa. Fallon said she spent “all day” Monday at Logan, but that her original outbound flight was canceled and Southwest was then unable to rebook her. She’s now planning to fly to Florida on another airline on Wednesday.
“I want my money back,” Fallon said. “I want to be reimbursed. And I also would like to be reimbursed the difference of what I had to pay to get a new flight.”
Fallon’s frustration was compounded by what she described as abysmal communication from Southwest, which has been plagued by mass cancellations nationwide all week. She said she didn’t learn that her original flight had been canceled until arriving at Logan, and that the information came via the airport loudspeaker instead of a direct message from the carrier.
In addition, Fallon said, her dozens of calls to the airline have yet to yield a conversation with an actual human — hence, her return to Logan Tuesday.
“You still cannot call Southwest and get through to anybody live,” Fallon said.
On Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called on Southwest to fairly compensate customers en masse for canceled flights, including reimbursements for hotels and rebooked tickets.
"Southwest is planning to issue a $428 million dividend next year — the company can afford to do right by the consumers it has harmed. Southwest should focus first on its customers stranded at airports and stuck on interminable hold," the senators said in a statement.
Danielle Tremblay and Verona Olguin were hoping to return to the Dallas area after enduring three separate cancellations, two on Monday and another early Tuesday. They were able to secure a fourth reservation after alerting Southwest's Logan staff to concerns about how the repeated cancellations threatened their health given limited access to medication — Tremblay walks with crutches due to nerve fatigue and Olguin has a traumatic brain injury.
“I actually had to push it, because we truly had a medication problem with both of us, and they couldn’t delay us anymore,” Olguin said.
Tremblay and Olguin both praised the staff at Logan who assisted them, and headed to security check-in after speaking with a GBH News reporter.
Fallon, who was seeking a ticket refund, later reported that she’d succeeded — to a point.
“I got my money back,” Fallon said. “Now, as far as anything additional, I’m going to have to wait until the 800 number is accessible and try to talk to them about it, which is fine with me … It was 600 bucks! That’s a lot of money.”
Resolution was more elusive for other travelers. Matt Habinowski — who works at the U.S. embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan — was trying to reach Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, for a vacation with extended family from New England.
Originally, Habinowski said, he and his wife and two children were supposed to fly Southwest from Manchester, New Hampshire, to Baltimore on Tuesday morning, and then continue to Dominican Republic. But that plan was derailed when their Manchester flight was canceled Monday night.
Habinowski, too, said Southwest didn’t reach out proactively about the cancellation, and that his family came to Boston “to talk to a human.”
“The managers here have been good — they’ve been problem-solvers in helping us,” Habinowski said. “We got some bad information from Southwest in Manchester. But no one from Southwest will answer the phone … so our only chance to get some sort of information was to actually drive to Logan.”
Habinwoski and his family are currently weighing Southwest’s offer of a flight to Punta Cana on another carrier. He questioned Southwest’s claim that severe weather across the United States is responsible for its systemic breakdown.
“It’s sunny and bright in Manchester,” he said. “It’s sunny and bright in Baltimore. It seems to me it’s very clear it’s a mismanagement of resources, so that makes it even more frustrating.”
In their statement, Sens. Markey and Blumenthal agreed the company's own failures were to blame for the current situation.
“Southwest cannot avoid compensating passengers by claiming these flight cancellations were caused by recent winter storms. As Southwest executives have acknowledged, the mass cancellations yesterday were largely due to the failure of its own internal systems. As such, those cancellations should be categorized as ‘controllable,’ and Southwest should compensate passengers accordingly,” the senators said.
Ed Freni, the director of aviation at Massport, said Southwest had canceled about 15 outbound flights as of midday Tuesday, and that it’s still not clear if the airline’s performance in Boston is on the upswing.
“I think it’s too early to really tell,” Freni said. “They have more flights scheduled this afternoon. I have seen a couple of planes land here — they have four on the ground right now — but they’re not moving them quickly.
“I think they’re still in recovery mode,” Freni added. “Fortunately for us, for this airport itself, [Southwest isn’t] a big part of our operation, but it obviously is significant, and customers are getting frustrated.”
Freni urged anyone playing to depart Boston on Southwest to get as much information as possible before coming to Logan.
“I hate to see people come here and then realize once they get here that their flight’s either delayed or canceled,” Freni said. “There’s ways to do that other than going directly to Southwest: you can go on our website, and look at the
flight information that we display that comes from the airlines. … Otherwise, you have to be patient and try to get some information from Southwest itself.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Matt Habinowski's planned destination.
