Tenn./Ky. (VBKO) – A travel nightmare is what many travelers are calling their recent experience with Southwest Airlines.
Locals from the area share their experiences that caused Christmas and thousands of dollars to disappear.
“It’s literally like a Hallmark show wrapped in this crazy adventure.” And we’re still not home,” said Jennifer Reed, a resident of the White House in Tennessee.
Jennifer and Jimmy Reed thought they were planning a few days in New York before Christmas.
“We’ve never been to New York before and we wanted to see what the Christmas stuff was all about,” she said.
That two day trip turned into 10 days and counting because of Southwest Airlines and its massive cancellations.
A North Tennessee couple missed Christmas with their two children, ages 16 and 8.
“There are no words to describe what we went through between 20 hours of subways and buses and trying to get from one airport to another, and running through airports and just trying to figure it out.” And there’s no communication,” Reid said.
A North Tennessee couple missed Christmas with their two children, ages 16 and 8.
“When you see that you’re little and heartbroken and devastated that your mom and dad aren’t home, and it’s out of our control — it’s hard on you,” Reid said.
The couple took a train from New York to Washington and will travel overnight to Chicago, then meet a family friend halfway to take them home to the White House. Those train tickets alone cost nearly $1,200, Reed said. In total, the couple was out nearly $3,000.
“We want to be compensated. I mean, we’ve got a family, we’ve got bills, we’ve got a mortgage, you know, we’ve got to get reimbursed for this,” Reed said.
More importantly, Jennifer has to ration her daily medication since she wasn’t planning on being away for nearly two weeks.
“I bought the medicine in seven days. I’m on 10 days. So I had to skip some medications,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Franklin woman and her five-year-old daughter planned to visit her father in Washington, who is in the military, for Christmas.
“It broke my heart because when our flight got cancelled, she was like, ‘but I want to see my dad,'” Jolene Schmucker said.
A mother and her child spent hours overnight at the airport and had to get a hotel, but finally arrived on vacation. However, returning to Kentucky was another set of problems.
“Probably about $1,500 extra dollars.” “And I was only able to use one leg on the American to get to Washington, but we drove back, we came back on Tuesday,” Schmucker said.
All in all, the travel nightmare is taking its toll on these travelers in the future.
“I never dreamed that an airline would be able to stop the system the way it has to affect us so badly,” Reid said.
“I’m really going to struggle to fly in the future because it was just traumatizing,” Schmucker said.
Schmucker went on to say that a random stranger at the Nashville airport acted as a guardian angel during a stressful time.
She tells VBKO News that this woman, named Kathryn, from Franklin, Tennessee, was extremely helpful with her daughter during the late night and early morning hours at the airport. Schmaker would like to locate her to thank her again for all her help.
“I feel like sometimes disasters like this bring people together, where normally you wouldn’t have that kind of interaction.” “Despite everything, I think we’re very lucky,” Schmucker said.
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