customers, and they have committed over and over again, to make sure that people are made whole and by that i mean, they are reimbursed for flights, the bags that are still lost, they re found and then returned to the right people. but there is this reputational issue on the line and that s what a lot of folks are talking about today, take a listen to one quick conversation i had. do you know what happened with southwest, as with what has happened in southwest, has that changed your interest with the airline to book with them in the future? probably, because i think they had issues earlier when covid was worse, i remember that southwest was having a lot of issues, so i think overall, throughout the years, it kind of steered us away from that. reporter: people had been hearing all of these horror stories of not just the cancellations, and you know, families missing out on their holidays, not getting to celebrate with their loved ones for christmas, but also people just waiting for
things get fixed. reporter: this is the way that you could get refunded by southwest airlines. southwest airlines.com/travel disruption and you put in your confirmation number and your name and that is the way you could submit receipts and get refunded for expensed that you incurred from the airline if your flight was axed. the other big thing is reunited passengers with their luggage. there is still a big pile here at reagan national airport. we ve seen it happen at airports across the country, oakland and el paso and that part of the story is not over yet. let s hope there are no christmas presents in there. a lot of money went to airlines during the pandemic. yeah. could any of this money been spent on a system that would have prevented this? reporter: i think that is a question that congress will really have to ask. southwest received about $7 billion in covid funds. airlines $52 billion in total. the biggest part of that money was to keep airline employees on the job it
have massive cancellations for the airlines affected the most have big hubs in those main swaths of the country that were hit really, really hard. at the same time the issue southwest ran into what s an additional issue that had to do their it failing and they had to manually piece things together. that create a monumental disaster but we can go back and say what has happened over the last three years? a lot of government action create the situations that lead to fewer pilots if you are airline employees. with the mass vaccination mandates through the federal government people took early retirement because southwest and the other airlines had billions of dollars they did not lay off people per se but they incentivize them to leave and when demand came back over a year ago they were caught flat-footed. i blame the airline and management for that. i also blame these obscene there coupled with lockdowns to destroy businesses and printing
that will be causing a lot of missed connections. it s going to be bad. by the middle of the week, things should get back to normal for the most or part. never be mean to airline employees. trust me, they want u to get your flight. they want you out of their face. people are frustrated because they want to get home. trust me, airline employees want you out of there more than you want to be. absolutely. you re all in it together. looking forward to 2023. what are you seeing in terms of travel predictions? it will likely be a trend of another surge in travel after people have largely been stuck at home for a few years now. absolutely. one of the biggest trend is china is opening up. there s huge demand in china. we will see a lot more competition. unfortunately, prices probably