Winter storm and Southwest system meltdown cause chaos during holiday travel

FORT MYERS, Fla. — It was a white Christmas for many this year, but not like the song, more like a Hollywood movie. As thousands of flights were canceled over the Christmas holiday some families actually decided to cut their vacation to Southwest Florida short, because of the colder than usual temps.

“We were visiting my mom in Naples and after that, we went to Marco Island,” Jessica Fromme describing what the family vacation was supposed to be like, “We were supposed to stay for three nights,” But the cold snap had the Fromme family ready to leave the beach and back home to North Carolina, “We’re not able to enjoy this quite the way we wanted to, so we had a good trip, let’s just go out while we’re ahead here.”

Despite the chaos throughout the country with the winter storm and canceled flights, the family decided to fly on Christmas Day, “Just one thirty-minute call and we had to pay a little bit, but not too much, but it wasn’t a problem to cancel the hotel.”

With hundreds of stranded passengers in line hoping for a Christmas Miracle, a Southwest employee decided to let passengers know what was happening in real-time, letting travelers know the reason why so many of their flights were canceled was because of a company-wide, system meltdown.

“The next flight we can get you out of Fort Myers is December 31st,” Amanda Herron and her boyfriend Jeff Stuck were just trying to get back home to San Diego as fast as they can, “We were planning on doing Christmas with my family back home in California on the 31st,” Stuck, desperately trying to get to his family.

While Herron and Stuck were able to find a flight out of Tampa days lat, the Leeper family was trying to get back home to St. Louis from a vacation that lasted way too long after spending Christmas in a hotel with no luggage.

“Nothing was open so we ate snacks out of the concessions at the hotel, and my son who’s 12 missed Christmas with his family, but he’s been a trooper.”

Many people have to power through and make their Christmas vacation happen any way they can, like Michael Lemmons, trying to make a sour situation, sweeter.

“We decided to hop in a car and drive through the night,” over 15 hours driving, from Chicago-Midway Airport to RSW. Even though the Lemmons family made it to Ft. Myers, “We’re here, our bags are not yet, but maybe we’ll have them by the end of the day.”

Lemmons was one of hundreds of Southwest passengers who were either looking for their baggage or waiting for it to arrive, like Time Golden, who knew one of his had finally made it from Baltimore because of technology, “I knew it was on the tarmac at BWI because my AirTags again, knew it was here because of my AirTags.”

Golden, who is waiting for his girlfriend to arrive Thursday night, he says he’s making sure the same thing doesn’t happen to her and told her to put all her essentials in her carry-on.

As frustration continues to arise from all of this, Lemmons knew there was only so much that could be done, “The employees are doing the best they can and it seems they’re not even getting good information, so I’ve been able to maintain a little bit of calm with them, because I know they’re doing the best they can.”

If it wasn’t a canceled flight or a missing bag, others were heading to the car rental areas, hoping they could get from point A to point B, like Dominic Occhiuzzo, “Just went to online, Expedia got a rental car pretty easily. I’m here now, so I’m planning to drive from Ft. Myers all the way to Orlando to make my flight to go back home to Denver,” trying to make it to Orlando by Thursday evening.

Even with so many people flooding the lines at car rental areas, the car availability was plentiful and some people had no issues at all, like Cindy Clow, “I got on a plane, came to Fort Myers, got a rental car,” in less than an hour from making her reservation.

At this time, many people are still stranded at destinations and whether or not they’ll make it home or to their vacation for the New Year, is still up in the air.

After nearly a week of canceling most of its flights, Southwest Airlines anticipates “minimal disruptions” on Friday.

The airline said it is investing in new solutions to manage wide-scale disruptions. The announcement comes after the airline canceled over 60% of its flights on Thursday, according to FlightAware. 

The airline wrote on Thursday.