KANSAS CITY, Mo. — People traveling with Southwest Airlines continue to experience delays, cancellations, and missing bags.
Most of the departing Southwest flights at Kansas City International Airport were canceled Wednesday. However, a few did make it out.
With thousands of travelers nationwide being separated from their checked bags, Southwest is implementing a new plan to store all of that luggage.
The plan? Putting them in nearby cargo facilities. Southwest Airlines issued a statement to FOX 4 saying, “Our teams have begun moving baggage to cargo facilities and out of airports as we continue the work of reuniting customers with their bags. Today, we stood up this additional resource to assist.”
About a dozen or so bags were visible at Southwest’s Baggage Services in KCI on Wednesday afternoon. Most of that was later moved over to a nearby cargo facility along with thousands of other bags.
Joseph Ikner just returned home to Kansas City. He flew to Cancun with his wife and son to attend a wedding. He made it to Chicago, but his connecting flight to Kansas City was canceled. After several hours with no help or vouchers from Southwest, he finally located a flight that could take him home.
Although his family made it back, not all of their luggage did.
“We had five bags between my wife, my son, and myself. Four of them were here. One was not.”
Joseph filed a report and was told it would take up to five days for his back to arrive in Kansas City. On Wednesday, he received a notification about his bag and decided to drive up to KCI to see for himself if it was there.
Surprisingly, baggage services wrote down an address where Joseph and everyone else with missing luggage could drive to retrieve it. Neither Southwest nor KCI provided that address to FOX4, but Joseph did. We followed him to that location, where, after 10 minutes, he finally got his missing bag.
The crew also gave him a $400 voucher to use in the next year. Roughly a dozen people were at the site at the same time as FOX4. Some walked away empty handed, while most walked out with their luggage and a voucher.
Caiden Whittle is one of those who walked away with his bag. The California resident flew to Denver, but his connecting flight to Kansas City was canceled. Just like Joseph, Caiden eventually made it to his final destination, but his bag did not. After being reunited with it, he called the experience “very stressful. Kind of hard to describe, like no one wants to go through that type of thing.”
Both Caiden and Joseph are hesitant to fly with Southwest in the future after the ordeal. Joseph, a pastor, gave one final plea to the airline.
“Southwest, we just need you to do better. We need you to kind of get this situation worked out for people who are elderly, on medications, who don’t have access to their stuff, people who are out of their money, just please. Do right. Make this situation right.”
If you need to locate your missing bag and recently flew on Southwest, view here.
