Do congress people get involved with private airlines cancelling flights?
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Yes. There is this small, little-known department of the US Government called the Department of Transportation and they help to regulate many many things about the industry 
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This is my fear, trip is in 11 days and so worried about flight changes. My schedule is has so little park time because of work meetings, that I will be so devastated if my flight there gets canceled.
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Airlines are heavily regulated by contemporary standards, and entirely at the federal level. Cabinet departments, like Transportation, have congressional oversight. Fielding a citizen complaint about a federally-regulated business is exactly the type of politically-neutral constituent service even a modestly ambitious congressperson should be absolutely all over.
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My Congressperson is Darrell Issa so I don’t expect much from him but he and my two Senators will hear about my personal experience with SW. And this is exactly the sort of constituent service that they are there for, as you said.
This isn’t just a SW issue and the airlines need to do something. I get cancelling for weather or unforseen problems but this is not that. This is a staffing issue and the airlines just slow-walking doing anything to resolve it. They’re using Covid as an excuse to not actually do anything about the problem. But, I’m sure the airline CEOs will all get their bonuses for what an awesome job they’re doing! 
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Don’t they have to use the “conditions of carriage” or your invoking Rule 240 if they delay or cancel on you? I know I have run into a handful of times with equipment malfunctions and I have used 240 to make sure the ticketing agent got me a replacement regardless of carrier. But it has been probably three or four years since I have had that happen.
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Oh geez, so sorry to hear you are going through this mess! Hope you get there soon and have a wonderful time. Keep us posted!
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Thank you! I’m traveling tomorrow so I get to be unnecessarily stressed for the next 18 hours or so. 
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Rule 240 became obsolete after deregulation.
Now every airlines contact of carriage is different. Most only do this within their interline agreements. Southwest, as well as most low cost carriers do not have interline agreements with other airlines.
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Well, and if you remember, we specifically bailed out the airline industry supposedly SO that they wouldn’t face a staffing challenge. So I think it’s entirely appropriate for Congress to call some airline heads in front of congress to know why they didn’t uphold their end of the bargain for the bailout.
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Her flight was to leave tomorrow morning. Everyone is already checked in.
Fingers crossed for you tomorrow. March SW cancelled my flight after we were at airport(plane did not come in night before). It’s unreal
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This is why I’m glad flights are too expensive for my points and we are sticking to driving down. I do not need that nightmare, especially with it being the weekend after Thanksgiving.
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I had expected the rebooking would have been more than 24 hours since the cancelled one was 24 hours away.
I think the bigger issue would be that purchasing early bird that close to a flight is likely to be completely useless
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I know it states that it reassigns but that has not been my experience. As long as the others have not been assigned I think it would be ok.
I would ask for the refund if it did not work, but I just would have waited.
I am clarifying: I have received A18 after modifying a flight with EB - more than once.
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The only point of early bird is you get your check in automatically at 36 hours rather than 24 hours so you ideally end up with a better boarding group. In the case of my flight out of Ontario I got A. When they cancelled it was within the 24 hour window. For my rebooked flight it was technically like 25 hours out so I suppose I could have gotten early bird but I would have been behind every other person who had early bird and the A Listers, etc. Not worth it. I ended up with B for my new flight. 
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The completely cancelled my flight and I couldn’t modify it online. I had to call an agent. And I think when they cancel like that they automatically refund your EB. At least that was what the agent indicated. Aside from that, I was basically 25 hours out from my new flight so anybody who had EB had already been issued their boarding group. Not worth it at that point even if it was still a option.
Did they refund your EB?
I think everyone understood the issue with the EB. There were comments to me since I first told you your EB would transfer with a modification. I was assuming your new flight would be much later.
Technically they could claim that they gave it to you at your booking at 25 hours if it was not immediately refunded. I am curious if they did automatically refund you?
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We were posting at the same time @socalgaljmg_745911! The only advantage would have been automatic boarding number before anyone that did not have EB (even if it was 5 minutes before the window).
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