It hoists her 36,000 feet into air. Should she be worried about outdated technology?

We’re not even two weeks into the new year and I’m already befuddled. I realize this isn’t exactly breaking news since I find being befuddled a part of the human condition. And really if you’re not experiencing bouts of befuddlement on a regular basis, you must be lacking in even the most rudimentary curiosity. I’m having problems deciding if that would be a huge respite for your brain or beyond boring.

Well, that’s great now I’m befuddled about being befuddled.

But I’m going to shove that aside to focus on a more pressing befuddlement. One I can’t seem to shake. What happened to Southwest Airlines?

As a longtime Southwest Airlines fan (because I’m just a girl who can’t say no to $49 airfare so never mind the whole getting herded onto a plane like a pack of cranky cattle all fervently praying for an aisle seat) I’m still reeling over their colossal Christmas meltdown.

I say reeling because thanks to Southwest, my daughter almost didn’t make it home for Christmas. Now, I realize far worse things can happen, but that didn’t stop me (or my daughter) from ugly crying over the prospect that she would be spending Christmas without her family.

She had four flights canceled, and to make matters worse, her luggage was drowning in the deep morass of Southwest baggage hell. She said she felt like she was in the worst Hallmark holiday movie ever.

Thanks to the skillful maneuverings of my husband and my son who’s a pilot (hobby not profession), they cobbled together a plan that got her home in the wee hours of Christmas morning. My daughter also found her bags due to an electronic tracking device she had put in her luggage. She followed the signal that led her to an area with “suitcases as the far as the eye could see” at the airport where her first flight was canceled. Upon locating her luggage, she vowed that she was never going to check a bag again.

I chalked the whole experience up to being a Christmas miracle. Maybe even a two-fer since she made it home and found her suitcases. But I can’t shake being perplexed over how the fourth-largest airline in North America could fail that hard. Then I read that one of the reasons for the calamity was scheduling software that was outrageously outdated.

Are you kidding me? What’s next? Finding out that the Southwest email accounts are @aol.com like my 89-year-old mother-in-law’s? Discovering the company is still passing around a copy of Microsoft Word from 1997?

The bare minimum I require from a mode of transportation that hoists me 36,000 feet into the air is technology that’s more updated than my nana’s Dell desktop. I realize that the scheduling software isn’t responsible for the safety of the airplane, but it still gives me a bad case of befuddlement. Just like the saying “little lie, big lie,” outdated technology in one sector of an airline company makes me nervous about the company overall.

That’s not to say I don’t have faith that Southwest will, as my mother used to say, “learn and grow from this experience,” but it’s not for nothing that our daughter flew back to California on a different airline. And no, she still didn’t check her bag.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.