Southwest Airlines is cancelling 2,500 flights a day! What's going on?

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: Got a flight today or tomorrow? Well, good luck. According to flightaware.com, nearly 3,000 flights have been canceled today. About 2,500 have been delayed. And that's looking good compared to this past weekend. Quite a mess and a perfect storm you could say. Flying Southwest Airlines? Well, that's a horror show.

Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport is reporting nearly all Southwest Airlines flights to and from the Twin Cities are canceled today, more than 30 flights in all. To give us some insight as to why this is happening, Gunnar Olson is on the line. He's a travel reporter and flight deal analyst at thriftytraveler.com. Gunnar, welcome back to the show.

GUNNAR OLSON: Hi, Cathy. Thanks for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Well, air travel clearly was not looking good this past weekend. I mean, your site said more than 15,000 flights were canceled from Thursday through Sunday. More than 30,000 were delayed. Were airlines not prepared for this big snowstorm or what?

GUNNAR OLSON: Well, I think the snowstorm touched a lot of airlines initially. But as you mentioned, there's one airline in Southwest that was kind of uniquely unprepared for this. They were touched pretty specifically in places like Chicago and Denver where they operate a lot of flights by the initial winter storm. And that kind of just broke their scheduling system, which made it hard for them to put crews on various flights to get people where they needed to go. And that's unfortunately led to where they are today.

CATHY WURZER: How bad is it for Southwest?

GUNNAR OLSON: It's pretty bad. So they're canceling more than 2,500 flights a day. That's about two-thirds of their network, which is mostly here in the United States. Basically, they've had to cancel two-thirds of their flights today, tomorrow, and in the last couple of days in an effort to reset things.

Their system is broken. And right now, there's an internal memo that went around through Southwest showing that they're doing scheduling manually. So they're having crews call in from wherever they are, and they're doing this all by hand. So it might take a few more days to get caught up here too.

CATHY WURZER: There was talk that the US Department of Transportation might look into Southwest's issues. Is that going to happen?

GUNNAR OLSON: We haven't yet heard from Secretary Buttigieg today. But he's been pretty tough on the airlines as far as accountability, getting people where they need to go, and getting people refunds. So I definitely wouldn't rule it out.

CATHY WURZER: Boy, the videos-- well, you've seen the video from other airports of the luggage, just piles of luggage at Chicago's Midway Airport as an example. What do you have advice for folks that want to hop on a plane this week because I'm presuming everything's all backed up and will be for several days?

GUNNAR OLSON: Well, unfortunately, I, myself, am possibly going to get caught up in this too, Cathy. I have two Southwest flights on the schedule for tomorrow. And against all odds, they are still green. It appears that I'm flying tomorrow as of right now. But I'm a little superstitious, so I loathe even saying that out loud.

But what I recommend is people come up with a backup plan because you really cannot count on Southwest to get you where you need to go right now. Book another provisional flight if you can, something refundable just in case your Southwest flag does go. Otherwise, they've issued a travel waiver through January 2nd, which means you can change yourself onto any other Southwest flight where there are seats available for the same cost as you've already paid for your flight-- no fare difference, no change fees, or anything up to 14 days from when you were scheduled to travel.

So if you can punt your trip one extra week, you're going to save yourself a lot of headaches. And you won't have to pay any more to do so. So take advantage of that waiver if you can. Book a provisional flight if you really need to go somewhere tomorrow like I do. And exhaust all your options if you have to drive, take the train, look into what other options you have.

CATHY WURZER: If you-- and I'm sure people who are still stuck at airports are probably not listening to us right now-- but if you happen to be one of those unfortunate individuals, do they need to put you up somewhere or make it right? Or are you kind of hung out to dry by airlines?

GUNNAR OLSON: So if your flight is canceled like completely canceled, you are due a refund for that flight. You have to go to Southwest's website and request it yourself. But you are due a full refund in the form of payment that you paid. So make sure you go ahead and go get your money back from Southwest.

If it's a long delay, there is no law that says they have to put you up. What you can do, however, is go to their website, and you can apply for reimbursement for some of your travel expenses. The language is very vague on purpose. They say they can reimburse you for, quote, "reasonable expenses", which I guess is determined by the person you're on the phone with. So I wouldn't count on anything.

But there are other ways to make sure that you get reimbursed, especially if you have something like travel insurance from a credit card that you booked the flight with or something like that. So look into all your options and know your rights. I'm sure there are a lot of people googling those things right now. But we have a lot of guides on our website too. If they're a traveler stuck at the airport, you need to check out what they are owed.

CATHY WURZER: By the way, you mentioned travel insurance. Is that a good idea for situations like this?

GUNNAR OLSON: I would say there aren't two types of travel insurance that are exactly alike. I would read the fine print on whatever you're buying ahead of time. A lot of the travel insurance that the airlines will try and sell you directly is frankly junk.

I think there are other kind of annual subscription travel insurance where you can make pretty good on situations like these and then obviously everything with the credit cards too. But just make sure you know exactly what you're getting before you buy travel insurance. And in most cases, honestly, we tell people to just book an airline that's flexible or book a main cabin fare that's changeable.

CATHY WURZER: Well, good advice, Gunnar. And by the way, good luck. I hope you do catch that flight.

GUNNAR OLSON: Thank you. Thank you. We'll see. I'm not counting on it.

CATHY WURZER: Gunnar Olsen is a travel reporter and a flight deal analyst at thriftytraveler.com.