Airlines Should Work Harder to Help Travelers; a Healthy Shopping Season Ends–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Dec. 26, 2022

Indy Digest: Dec. 26, 2022

Merry day after Christmas, everyone.

On Friday night, we picked up our friend Bryan at the Reno airport. He’d flown up from Palm Springs via Las Vegas on Southwest Airlines to join us for Christmas—and while he arrived two hours late, he was one of the fortunate ones.

It’s been a nightmarish four days for travel—and it isn’t getting any better. The Washington Post reports:

Nearly 5,500 flights have been canceled Monday as weather continues to trip up holiday travel while passengers attempt to make their way back home after Christmas.

According to FlightAware, a website that tracks airline delays and cancellations, 5,409 flights had been canceled as of 4:30 p.m., while more than 16,000 flights had been delayed.

On Friday, a storm spreading heavy snow, ice and severe cold temperatures across significant portions of the United States was to blame for more than 5,000 flight cancellations. …

Southwest Airlines was heavily impacted on Monday, with nearly 2,700 flights—roughly two-thirds of the airline’s flights—canceled, according to FlightAware. Company officials said the weekend’s heavy storms forced service changes that required the repositioning of crew and air fleet to return Southwest to normal operations. The company said in a statement that it anticipates “additional changes with an already reduced level of flights as we approach the coming New Year holiday travel period.”

Yikes.

In Bryan’s case: There were three Southwest flights (two nonstop, one via Oakland) scheduled from Las Vegas to Reno after his flight on Friday. All of them were cancelled. When Bryan mentioned this, my husband made a comment: “It’s like Southwest isn’t trying hard enough.”

At first, I disagreed with the statement. The logistical messes created when weather or other problems cancel or delay flights are legitimate and daunting. Just for starters, planes and crews are in the wrong places, and that has to be fixed before things can get back to normal.

However, the more I thought about things, and the more I watched things develop over the weekend, the more I began to think my husband has a point.

I’ve been watching social-media posts like this one come in all weekend:

I know it’s tough right now for any business to remain fully staffed, between the triple-demic of respiratory viruses running amok, the holidays and the so-called worker shortage. But the world knew days in advance that these particular storms were coming. We all know that, in general, more and more bad storms will be hitting thanks to climate change.

Air travel is so very important to people, in myriad ways. If you’ve been on social media at all in the last four days, you’ve likely seen numerous posts from people expressing heartbreak over postponed or ruined holiday travel plans. We depend on the airlines to get us where we need to go for business, for medical reasons, and for vacations we’ve been looking forward to for years.

Meanwhile, the big airlines are very profitable, and have gotten a lot of government help on their way to these big profits.

So when I look at, for example, the state of Southwest Airlines right now—more flights cancelled than taking off, crashing websites, ridiculous telephone hold times, record revenues and massive profits—it’s impossible to believe the airline is trying hard enough.

As of this writing, the status page on the Palm Springs International Airport includes eight Southwest flights scheduled today. Every one of them has been cancelled.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The state of Texas is again inhumanely using real people as pawns in a political argument. The New York Times reports: “Over a hundred migrants arrived near Vice President Kamala Harris’ home on Saturday evening, one of the chilliest Christmas Eves on record in the capital, according to a mutual aid group. Volunteers anticipated three buses with about 130 immigrants to arrive in New York on Christmas Day, but the buses were rerouted to the Washington area because of road closures and frigid conditions, said Madhvi Bahl, an organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network. Migrants arrived in Washington after a 36-hour journey, some with little more than a T-shirt or a light blanket, Ms. Bahl added. … The mutual aid group said the buses were sent by the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which follows the directive of Gov. Greg Abbott’s office. ‘They have been doing that for a few months now; it’s all for the spectacle,’ Ms. Bahl said of the governor’s office. ’The cruelty is the point. It’s awful to use people in this manner, for political reasons.’”

• Our partners at CalMatters report on the unused campaign funds that politicians keep stashed—in some cases, for years: “It has been nearly eight years since Bill Lockyer held elected office in California. … Nevertheless, Lockyer still has more than $1 million in a campaign account for the 2026 lieutenant governor race. Every month, he pays $2,500 to consultant Michelle Maravich, who said she helps maintain his donor list, manage meetings and appearances, and provide advice on occasional contributions to other candidates as the 81-year-old Democrat contemplates a comeback. … Lockyer’s seven-figure war chest is among the largest of nearly 100 accounts belonging to state political candidates with leftover campaign cash, according to a CalMatters analysis of California campaign finance records. Collectively, they hold about $35 million—funds that never got spent on the campaigns for which they were raised—ranging from $13.1 million that former Gov. Jerry Brown didn’t need to win re-election in 2014 to $9.62 in the account for a failed Assembly run that same year run by investment manager Thomas Krouse. CalMatters counted campaign funds for the Legislature and state constitutional offices that politicians are sitting on years after leaving their positions, that are in committees for past races or for which the candidate did not end up running.” Note: This does not even include 2022 candidates’ committees.

• The COVID-19 pandemic has been going for almost three years now. That stinks. However, as Time magazine reports, the pandemic’s length has taught scientists a lot about how immunity works when it comes to SARS-CoV-2. One example: “Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University, recently reported that people vaccinated and boosted with the original mRNA vaccines generate similar levels of antibodies against some of the newer Omicron variants as people who got the updated Omicron-specific booster. This phenomenon, called immune imprinting, may explain why people who were vaccinated with the original shots may have waning levels of antibodies that make them vulnerable to getting infected, but once they are infected, even with the latest variants, they don’t seem to develop severe COVID-19. This shows that the antibodies are apparently changing in response to the new viruses they are encountering.”

• Retailers are breathing a sigh of relief as the 2022 holiday shopping season comes to a close. The Associated Press reports: “Holiday sales rose this year as American spending remained resilient during the critical shopping season despite surging prices on everything from food to rent, according to one measure. Holiday sales rose 7.6 (percent), a slower pace than the 8.5% increase from a year earlier when shoppers began spending the money they had saved during the early part of the pandemic, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks all kinds of payments including cash and debit cards. Mastercard SpendingPulse had expected a 7.1% increase. The data released Monday excludes the automotive industry and is not adjusted for inflation, which has eased somewhat but remains painfully high. U.S. sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24, a period that is critical for retailers, were fueled by spending at restaurants and on clothing.”

• And finally … people who’ve bought a Samsung washing machine in the last year and a half should read this CBS News story about a recall: “Samsung is recalling about 663,000 top-loading washing machines that can overheat and pose a fire hazard, the appliance company said on Thursday. The company has received 51 reports of ‘smoking, melting, overheating or fire’ connected with the washers, 10 of which resulted in property damage. In addition, three people reported injuries from smoke inhalation, Samsung said. The 14 models of washing machines were sold in the U.S. between June 2021 and December 2022, at stores including Best Buy, Costco, The Home Depot, Lowe’s, and online at Samsung.com, the company said.”

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