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A punishing winter storm that dumped several feet of snow across the US caused widespread flight cancellations over Christmas. On Monday, air travel will more or less return to normal — unless you’re booking your holiday trip on Southwest Airlines.
Flight tracking website FlightAware reported that more than 90% of canceled US flights were on Southwest on Tuesday. Southwest canceled 2,500 flights. Next highest: Spirit Airlines with 75.
Southwest has warned it will continue to cancel flights until it gets its operations back on track. The company’s CEO said it was the biggest disruption he had seen in his career. The Biden administration is investigating.
What does it give?
Southwest had a combination of bad luck and bad planning.
The storm hit Chicago and Denver hard, with the Southwest having two major hubs – Chicago Midway Airport and Denver International Airport.
More bad luck: The triple hurricanes swept across the U.S., leaving people and their families sick with Covid, the flu and RSV. Although Southwest says it’s fully booked for the holiday weekend, illness makes it difficult to adjust to the increased systemic stress. When events such as bad weather cause delays or extend the hours flight crews are allowed to work under federal safety regulations, many airlines still don’t have enough staff to recover.
But Southwest ( LUV ) hurts itself with a terrible schedule and underinvestment in its operations.
Southwest’s schedule includes shorter flights with tighter return times, which is causing some problems, FlalaAware spokeswoman Kathleen Bangs told CNN.
“Those times of change can mess things up,” Bangs said.
Closed customers were unable to go to Southwest customer service lines to rebook flights or find lost luggage.
The president of the union that represents Southwest flight attendants told CNN on Monday that the workers have not been able to communicate with the airline.
TWU Local 556 President Lynn Montgomery told CNN’s Pamela Brown, “The phone system the company uses is not working. Flight attendants are not being staffed enough to provide them with schedule changes, and this is causing chaos across the country.”
Southwest Airlines Pilots Association President Capt. Casey Murray said Southwest’s problems have been a long time coming.
“We’ve had these issues for the last 20 months,” he told CNN. “We see these types of meltdowns happen regularly and it really has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”
He said the airline’s operations have not changed much since the 1990s.
“It’s the phones, it’s the computers, it’s transmitting the power, it’s the programs that connect us to the airplane — that’s where the problem is, and the airline system as a whole,” he said.
In a message to employees obtained by CNN, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan acknowledged many of Murray’s concerns and promised the company would invest in better systems.
“One area we’re suffering from is a lack of equipment,” Jordan told the crew. “We’ve talked a lot about modernizing the operation and the need to do that.”
“The airline is committed and invested in improving its operations, but we need to be able to develop solutions quickly,” he said.
The US Department of Transportation said it was investigating.
“USDOT is concerned about Southwest’s reports of an unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays and a lack of prompt customer service,” the agency said. He tweeted.. “The department will investigate whether cancellations are manageable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”
In order to recover, Jordan told the Wall Street Journal that the company plans to make more than a third of its program in the coming days to help employees get the right positions.
If all of this is ringing a bell, it’s because this isn’t the first time Southwest service has had a spectacular meltdown. In October 2021, Southwest canceled more than 2,000 flights in a four-day period, costing the airline $75 million.
Southwest blamed that service slowdown on bad weather in Florida, a brief problem with local air traffic control and a lack of manpower to fix those problems. It acknowledged service problems caused by short staffing before thousands of canceled flights left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.
Similar to this month’s service woes, Southwest fared worse than its competitors last October. While Southwest canceled hundreds of flights in the days following the massive October disruption, competitors quickly returned to regular service.
In a call with Wall Street analysts later that month, then-CEO Gary Kelly said the company had made adjustments to prevent a similar meltdown in the future.
“We have planned our capacity to adapt to the current workforce environment, and our hourly performance has improved,” Kelly said on Oct. 21. “We are hiring heavily to meet our goal of nearly 5,000 new employees by the end of this year. year, and we’re now more than halfway to that goal.
And, like the latest disruption, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said the cancellations were caused by “poor planning by management.”
— CNN’s Ross Levitt contributed to this report
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