Holiday Travel Mishap Results in Southwest Airlines Class Action

• Author: Mikko Rocco
• Posted: 2024-08-06

Southwest Airlines is the 4th-largest American airline company, behind American Airlines, Delta and United. In terms of Americans who use Southwest to fly across the continental US, however, the airline company is the 2nd-largest. However, over the main holiday weekend last month, there were over 15,000 flight cancellations from Southwest due to an unprecedented system error that continued for days. It was a complete "operational meltdown," as reported at the time, and this had a cascading effect that even caused Southwest's staff to apparently malfunction. Thousands upon thousands of customers are claiming that the staff was rude, dismissive, and that the company did not offer any sort of refunds for the people who missed their holiday travel flights.

This, of course, is resulting in a class action suit against Southwest Airlines, and most legal experts agree that it's a slam-dunk case for the class. The only real issue anyone foresees here is that the class may end up being so incredibly large that the settlement would likely not be enough to ensure that everyone got a full refund. The suit was brought up by Eric Capdeville in New Orleans, when he claimed that Southwest broke their contract after his December 27 flight was cancelled, by not allowing him to get a refund of his ticket price.

Southwest initially offered an alternative flight, but that never panned out, and so Capdeville, along with thousands of other passengers around the country, were stuck in place right after Christmas with no way to get home. According to Forbes, Southwest had no comment except to say that they were currently working on offering reimbursement to the many passengers who missed out on flights. According to the airline company, it can take many weeks to ensure that everyone gets a refund. Even still, the class action suit is going forward.

The issue at hand, according to someone speaking on the airline's behalf, is that there is no system in place to give instant refunds to everyone when something so catastrophic happens. It's not as if Southwest can reach into the drawer, like a fast food restaurant, and refund someone's money in cash. They have to reverse the payments in their system, and this would take any sort of company a long time. So some believe that Southwest has a strong defense on the reimbursement side of the class action. In terms of their actual system meltdown and how their staff reacted, that's an entirely different issue.

What's most likely to happen here is that Southwest will settle for some undisclosed amount that offers some sort of financial restitution to everyone who was affected by the system failure. It will very likely not ever see a courtroom, and it also likely will not be dragged out for months. Airline companies have a habit of closing these sorts of issues very quickly, after the smoke clears from all the negative press.
 

Airlines Have a Long Class Action History

Delta Airlines and price-fixing, American Airlines and baggage claims, and dozens of other class action lawsuits all paint a bright and vivid picture that tell the same story: airline companies get sued a lot in America. There's a "Domestic Airlines Class" website that acts as a free resource, and you can go there and see all the many different times airline companies have been sued by multiple people. Southwest is on there quite a few times, most recently settling a $17 million lawsuit in 2017.

With the way the tort system works in civil law, it's really impossible to tell if these airlines were legitimately guilty of any type of wrongdoing, or if they just settled because it would be cheaper than dragging a case out in court for months or years. This is always the case with a class action suit. Huge companies and corporations have plenty of funds to settle, and so the people in a class never do get to illustrate any type of true guilt in court. Most people in a class have been damaged in some way and just want financial restitution, and so they take it as quickly as they can possibly get it.

In the case of Southwest Airline's latest issue, however, it was on display to the entire world. Everyone saw the failure and the stranded people, and everyone knows that these people were not getting alternative flights. This case will likely not play out in court, but Southwest will also likely be on the hook for a lot more than $17 million.