Southwest meltdown will affect a million holiday flyers

Southwest Airlines continued with mass cancellations on Wednesday, scrapping more than 2,500 flights by 3:45 p.m. Eastern time, representing 62% of its schedule for the day, according to FlightAware.

Southwest accounted for 88% of all cancellations to, from or within the U.S. on Wednesday.

The airline warned earlier this week that it would take several days to restore normal operations. Southwest has already canceled more than 2,300 flights on Thursday, representing 58% of its schedule that day.

In a video address posted Tuesday evening, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan attempted to reassure flyers that the carrier is doing everything it can to restore normal operations. He said that Southwest plans to fly a reduced schedule “for the next few days” while repositioning aircraft and flight crews. 

On the heels of wide-scale disruptions, we're working diligently to Safely recover our operation & accommodate displaced Customers & Crews. We know this is unacceptable & sincerely apologize. If your travel was impacted, explore self-service options here: https://t.co/B6L8HR9Yqc pic.twitter.com/mLWndYMned

“We’re making headway and we’re optimistic to be back on track before next week,” Jordan said. 

The carrier has attributed its lingering problems, in part, to the breadth of its network. But Jordan also acknowledged that shortcomings relating to Southwest’s scheduling technology have exacerbated the airline’s meltdown. 

“The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well 99% of the time, but clearly we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what’s happening right now,” Jordan said.

Southwest released the recorded statement on the same evening that DOT secretary Pete Buttigieg made national television appearances promising to hold Southwest accountable for commitments in its contract of carriage to reimburse customers for expenses they incur due to cancellations.

Jordan also met with Buttigieg earlier on Tuesday.

The massive Southwest meltdown, which will likely end up impacting the holiday plans of more than a million flyers, came just weeks after the carrier announced that it would restore dividends next month. Southwest expects to pay investors $428 million in quarterly dividends in 2023. 

Outdated technology for crew rescheduling

Speaking with CNN on Tuesday, Mike Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said that the airline’s IT infrastructure for crew and aircraft scheduling is “vastly outdated” and unable to handle the carrier’s extensive and complex point-to-point network. 

As a result, the carrier lost track of the locations of its crew and its even its aircraft in the aftermath of disruptions caused last week by Winter Storm Elliott. 

“They never invest the money they need to, so we continue to have these issues,” Santoro said. 

Airline industry analyst Bob Mann of R.W. Mann & Co. also said that Southwest has outgrown the semi-manual tool it uses to reassign crew. 

Mann explained that in cases of crew misconnects and network disruptions, the tool relies on phoned-in pilot reports of locations. Manual reports are also given on status of flight crews in relation to the federally mandated limits on the number of consecutive hours they can work. That info is fed into the system to reconstruct schedules and crew assignments.

“That is manageable at modest scale, but untenable at large scale because it simply takes too long to generate a workable solution,” Mann said. 

He explained that while Southwest’s immediate solution is to operate several days of steeply pared schedules in order to reset its operation, a longer-term fix will require installing a new system that can handle 5,000 flights per day with more than 800 aircraft, operated by 8,500 pilots and 12,000 flight attendants.

“That will likely take more than a year,” Mann said. 

Southwest also had operational collapses in the summer and fall of 2021. But Santoro said this collapse is the largest he has experienced in 16 years with the carrier. 

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