The Southwest Airline Meltdown

Foghorn said:

How different is this from the Blue Bell ice cream or Chipotle contamination issues?

I actually don't remember anybody swearing off of Blue Bell.  Everybody just wanted to see it back in the stores so they could buy some more.  And Chipotle didn't go bankrupt...

Legume said:

I think it probably depends if you are someone that got sick from Chipotle or Blue Bell or someone that just had to avoid it while they cleaned up the problems.  Neither got hundreds of thousands of their customers sick.

But I do agree that customers will be back.  If this was a chronic issue, people would walk, but if it's mainly a one time, catastrophic meltdown that they can say they've fixed, people will accept that.

Legume said:

Agree - it's certainly not the first, but it's also not limited to southwest by any means, it was just massive for them this time.  Other airlines have had system issues - AA does regularly.  The holiday compounded the pain, but it also meant a lot of people were flying that probably don't fly all that often, don't fly for work, etc. It's easy to swear off a brand you don't use much or rely on.  Southwest stock has taken a hit as you would expect, but not that bad considering the disruption. It doesn't look like people are expecting it to fail, just some short term pain.

Gulfcoastguy said:

Thankfully my niece took Delta back to Europe.