MUNCIE, Ind. — A Texas woman is finally in Muncie with her mother, three days after her Southwest Airlines flight from Houston to Indianapolis was canceled.
Doctors told Melissa Clark to get to Indiana as fast as possible.
“They said they need to put her in hospice. There’s nothing more they can do for her cancer,” she said.
After spending hours stranded at Houston Hobby Airport, Clark decided to get in a car and drive from Houston to Muncie.
"I spent 11 hours at the airport total," Clark said. "I paid an extra $900 almost on a car rental to get here."
Clark spent 13 hours driving on Tuesday driving from Houston to Missouri, where she spent the night in a hotel — another expense to add to her travel misery. On Wednesday, she drove another six hours to get to Indianapolis.
On Thursday, she made it safe and sound to Muncie.
According to Southwest Airlines, they will "honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel and alternate transportation."
Clark said she just hopes they'll make it right.
"They said they were going to, so I expect them to hold to their word," she said.
Southwest was finally back to normal operations Friday. CEO Bob Jordan apologized for the inconvenience the fiasco caused for travelers.
"There is almost no way to apologize enough," Jordan told Good Morning America.
Jordan blamed the winter storm's impact for the massive bottleneck on flights, saying that Southwest's wide footprint hurt it more than other airlines such as Delta and United, who recovered quickly and didn't have anywhere close to the number of cancellations Southwest did.
"This was just an unprecedented storm for all airlines. It was widespread across the country, record cold," Jordan said. "What’s different for us is we’re the top airline in 23 of the top 50 cities so it just hit so many large locations all at the same time."