SAN ANTONIO — Southwest Airlines has left it's cancellation chaos behind, but Scott Keyes, the founder of ScottsCheapflights.com said that regaining people's trust is going to be a long journey.
Folks understand and forgive cancellations when they happen because of bad weather because of snowstorm." Keyes said.
He said people have a harder time stomaching what he called "blue sky cancellations"
"Cancellations that happen even when the weather's fine," he said. "That's what happened here with Southwest."
After thousands of cancellations during the busiest travel season of the year, Southwest Airlines said it is back to normal operations. Now people impacted by those cancellations are getting the chance to be reimbursed for meals, hotels, and any other costs of the disruption.
"We've heard from, you know, dozens, hundreds of Scott's Cheap Flights members who have been looking for advice on how they can recoup their out of pocket expenses."
Keyes said the most important thing customers can do is save their receipts.
"For any expenses you incurred as a result of your flight cancellation on Southwest meals, hotels, if your bag was stranded or lost toiletries, new clothes,” Keyes said. “Anything along those lines, even if you had to buy a replacement flight or a rental car, make sure you save those receipts and submit them to the airline."
Chief Commercial Officer for Southwest Ryan Green posted a video to the Airline’s website addressing customers directly.
"You can submit a full refund request for any cancelled flights, and if you have any travel expenses due to the disruption, you can submit those receipts directly on our website," he said.
Southwest said on its website it will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement, but Keyes notes that "reasonable" isn't really defined.
"For many folks who had to book last minute replacement flights, those fares were anything but reasonable," Keyes said pointing out that some people were looking at $1,000-$2,000 fares for a same or next day flight.
“Those types of fares are unfortunately, not out of the ordinary when you're talking about a last-minute ticket during the most popular travel time of the year,” he said. “But that was the price that many folks were facing if they want it to be able to get home for the holidays.”
Still, Keyes said he feels cautiously optimistic about Southwest’s eagerness to get back in people’s good graces.
“I'm hopeful that they're, you know, at the very least, they're going to make travelers whole for the out-of-pocket expenses they had to incur as a result of these cancellations,” he said. “But I think the airline ought to go further. They need there needs to be goodwill compensation on top of those reimbursements.”
He said if Southwest tries to deny a claim, people have a few options.
1: Take your request further up the chain of command at Southwest.
2: File a complaint with the Department of Transportation, or
3: If you used a credit card, see if it has travel protection.
"Just do a quick Google search of whatever credit card you have plus 'travel protections,'" he said.
Before trying these options he says to give Southwest one to two weeks to respond.
"If I haven't heard back in two weeks on their own. At that point, I'm starting to get a bit concerned,” he said. "The thing to remember here is that Southwest is it likely has hundreds of thousands of impacted travelers that they're working to sort through."