My hard-won expert traveler cred got challenged this morning. Southwest cancelled and rebooked me on a flight on a different day, so I’ve had to scramble to find another flight on another airline at the last second. Plus change parking and rental car reservations. With some quick thinking, I managed to get that done without much change to overall plans or budgets. Thanks United.

I’ve seen this before. An airline’s computer systems have a problem and flight changes cascade through their system for days. Southwest is very susceptible to this – they run a system without much flexibility. Any disruption impacts flights downstream, and big disruptions just shut them down. So I made a good decision just opting out of their flights until next week, when things should have settled down.

I’d hate to be their CIO right about now. You have one job – keep the computer systems running – but you didn’t, so the entire flight schedule gets wrecked for days. And people spend their money with your competitors. That’ll be an ugly meeting with the CEO.