The Southwest saga continues.
It’s been nearly a week since bad weather hit across the country and largely airlines have gotten back to normal, but not Southwest.
As the U.S. Department of Transportation investigates, here’s how one travel expert, the founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights, Scott Keyes describes the operational chaos:
“I think the best way to think about it is, you know, I’ve got a young daughter and occasionally her hair gets pretty tangled. Most of the time I can just brush it out and it, you know, it gets back to normal. Every once in a while there's a knot in there that gets so thorny that there's no choice but to just cut it off. And it seems like that's kind of what's happened with Southwest,” he said.
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Keyes hopes the airline can reset and get back on track around the start of the new year.
Of course, this is no comfort to folks who are dealing with the stress or have a flight soon.
If you’re still trying to get to your final destination on a Southwest flight, you probably know the company’s phone lines are swamped.
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If you can’t get their website or app to work to rebook, he suggests trying this.
“You still might be able to get through to a Southwest agent if you tried calling one of their international offices. Look, most Southwest travelers are going to call Southwest's main hotline, but Southwest actually also has offices down in Aruba, the Bahamas, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic. And you can get in touch with agents who can help get you rebooked. They're just the same as U.S.-based agents can. It's worth a try,” he said.
If you do have an upcoming flight with Southwest, Keyes says don’t count on the airline to send you an alert. Keep checking on your online flight details and work on a backup plan ASAP.
And he suggests, whoever you’re flying with, try to avoid checking a bag right now. Airport staff is swamped.
Here's the extended interview with Keyes.
NBC 5's Diana Zoga contributed to this article.
