An Orange County family is facing mounting travel woes after being stranded in Ohio during a widespread computer outage that has grounded Southwest Airlines flights across the country.
Laguna Beach resident Kenneth Greengard and his family of five were due to fly Thursday to John Wayne Airport from Chicago Midway International Airport. Instead, Southwest flew them to Columbus, Ohio, where they’ve been stuck for two days.
“Our only recourse is to bring this to the attention of the media,” Greengard said Friday afternoon. “They’re (Southwest) not offering us anything or helping us at all. We’re stuck.”
An outgoing flight from Columbus to Phoenix, then JWA was delayed. After six hours of waiting, the flight was canceled. The agent told him he and was on his own, Greengard said. He was not offered any vouchers or help in booking a hotel or rental car.
At a steep cost of around $3,000, he booked his family on a new Southwest flight Saturday into San Diego, the only one he could find. He is unsure if he will be reimbursed.
Greengard said aSouthest agent told him the family would be reimbursed at some point - "either by issuing a refund or by somehow getting the money to us."
The airline representative told him Southwest had no plan to pay for their hotel and rental car, food or anything else.
Greengard penned his frustrations in an email Friday to the Register:
“We are stuck in a city where we know not a soul, having to pay for all costs here, having had to pay for costs yesterday and will have to continue to pay for costs (including flights home). All because Southwest did not have the foresight to have redundant computer systems. Meanwhile my kids are melting down and we do not have anywhere to turn. Southwest offered us no help and they did not tell us anything.”
He said his family was not alone in their misery.
“In the Columbus airport, there were people who were missing weddings, potentially missing births, were supposed to be starting new jobs and we going on vacations. Also quite a few families with young children. (We met a women from Irvine who was traveling with a 3-month-old who was stranded as well.)”
Booking the San Diego flight was his only recourse, he said, or his family would have been stuck in Columbus until Monday when a Southwest flight was available.
Requests for comment by the Register were not immediately returned by the airline.
Friday marked the third straight day of canceled and delayed Southwest flights. At JWA, nine Southwest departing flights and 12 arriving flights were canceled Friday, according to the airport’s website.
Tracking service FlightStats Inc. reported 300 Southwest flights canceled and 1,200 more delayed by mid-afternoon. Southwest canceled nearly 1,500 flights and delayed 4,500 others Wednesday and Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
Southwest Airlines Co. said most of Friday’s cancellations were due to airline crews being unable to get to their flights after being stranded in other cities.
The airline said that a computer router failure caused several technology systems to break down. It said those systems were fully restored.
It also offered passengers half-off their next flight on Southwest Airlines.
In an email to customers, President and CEO Gary Kelly called the failure “unacceptable” and said that the 50 percent discount is valid for any domestic travel when booked by Oct. 31 for travel through Jan. 31.