Southwest Airlines Cannot Fly The Same Day, But It Does FAIL: Analysis of the 2010 Flares, Losses, and Staff Scattering

Airlines have been struggling to bounce back after losing tens of billions of dollars during the pandemic’s worst months. There are shortages as airlines try to make up for Americans’ return to air travel. Southwest hasn’t been the only airline to fail under the demand.

Southwest canceled more than 2,870 flights by 8:25 p.m. ET Monday — at least 70% of its schedule for the day, according to flight tracker FlightAware. Many people at airports are stuck without knowing when they can get to their destinations or where their bags are.

“What went wrong is that our IT infrastructure for scheduling software is vastly outdated,” he said. It can’t handle our complex route network, with the number of pilots and flight attendants we have.

“If you’re stuck on Southwest and need to travel, you should book a flight with another airline as quickly as possible,” says Kyle Potter, executive editor at the travel advice website.

The company said the severe weather had “forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity.”

In the past week, passengers shared photos and videos of long lines and overwhelmed baggage claim areas at airports across the country. At Southwest, the customer service phone line’s hold times averaged more than two hours, sometimes reaching four hours, according to Colorado Public Radio.

“I’m okay with these travel situations and fly on by myself when it’s just me, but when my one-year-old has to suffer through it because of ineptitude and mismanagement, that becomes personal,” Southwest passenger Joshua Caudle, who said he was unsure when they would be able to leave Denver, said on Denver7 News. I’m not going to work with that company again.

Several thousand Delta pilots picketed at major airports in the summer of 2010 to demand higher pay and highlight staff concerns, while passengers faced flight cancellation during the Fourth of July holiday rush. Last month, Delta pilots voted to authorize a strike after negotiations for a new contract were paused.

Cheap Flights at US Airports: An Empirical Analysis of Southwest Airlines’ Cancellation of Flights and Aerial Aircraft in the Presence of a Tropical Storm

Air travelers in the US hoping for clear skies on Tuesday following a disastrous week of weather-related flight cancellations and delays will have to extend their patience a few more days — particularly if they’re flying with Southwest Airlines.

Airports most affected by the Tuesday cancellations are Denver International, followed by Chicago Midway International, Baltimore/Washington International, Nashville International, Dallas Love Field and Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.

Jordan told the Wall Street Journal that the company will operate just over a third of its schedule in the coming days to give it more time to get crews into the right positions.

It was a difficult day today. In all likelihood we’ll have another tough day tomorrow as we work our way out of this,” Jordan said in an interview Monday evening with WSJ.com.

CNN’s Carlos Suarez spoke with frustrated passengers in line at the Southwest ticket counter at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday afternoon.

The customer service calls made to Southwest by CNN didn’t go through on Monday, so customers couldn’t even get in the queue to speak to a representative. Southwest told CNN it is “fully staffed to answer calls.”

Scott’s Cheapflights founder is suggesting an international number if you’ve been left out in the cold and you’re trying to reach a customer service agent.

“The main hotline for US airlines will be clogged with other passengers getting rebooked. “If you want to get through to an agent quickly, go to the airline’s international offices” said Scott Keyes.

Jay Mc Vay, President and Chief Executive Officer of Texas Instruments, said in a press conference at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport on Monday night that more than one thousand of the company’s products had been canceled because of the storm.

When flights and airplanes are canceled, they are left out of place and not in the cities they need to be in to continue operations.

McVay said that safety is the company’s first priority. “We want to make sure that we operate these flights safely and that we have the flight crews that have legal and sufficient time to operate these flights,” he stated.

He said that they will do everything they need to do to make sure people get home as soon as possible.

“If you’ve already left, take care of yourself, do what you need to do for your family, keep your receipts,” McVay relayed. “We will make sure they are taken care of, that is not a question.”

DOT apologizes to Southwest Airlines and the Upper Northeast in an Intercity Bus Service Affirmalty During a Supercollider Temperature Event

An announcement made in the terminal prior to the news conference apologized to customers, and said the next available SWA seats are on Saturday, December 31st and later. Southwest would be giving buses to hotels in the area so that all affected customers could get a place to stay.

“The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan,” USDOT said in a statement.

Southwest Airlines pilots were “tired of apologizing” for Southwest, the vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said on CNN. Our hearts go out to the passengers.

He told CNN they had issues for the past 20 months. We have seen these sorts of meltdowns occur more and more frequently, they just have to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.

He said the problem is caused by the phones, computers, programs used to connect airplanes and the whole airline.

— In hard-hit western New York, Buffalo International Airport said in its most recent tweet that it does not plan to resume passenger flights before 11 a.m. ET Wednesday, pushing back the expected reopening by another 24 hours later than previously anticipated.

— Greyhound, the largest provider of intercity bus service, issued a service alert on Monday afternoon stating many of its scheduled services in the upper northeast will be canceled or disrupted until further notice due to winter weather. The affected cities are Buffalo, Cleveland and Syracuse.

A winter storm that swept across the US was ill-timed for travelers who had started pushing Christmas week flying numbers back toward pre-pandemic levels.

The Southwest Airlines Time Delay Problem and a Possible Resolution of McClain’s Flying Grief in the Presence of a Snowstorm

“The phone system the company uses is just not working,” Lyn Montgomery, President of TWU Local 556, told CNN’s Pamela Brown. “They’re just not manned with enough manpower in order to give the scheduling changes to flight attendants, and that’s created a ripple effect that is creating chaos throughout the nation.”

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, in a message to employees obtained by CNN, acknowledged many of Murray’s concerns, and promised the company will invest in better systems.

Jordan told employees that there was a lack of tools. “We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that.”

Later that month, on a call with Wall Street analysts, then-CEO Gary Kelly said the company had made adjustments to prevent a similar meltdown in the future.

Kelly said on October 21 that the ontime performance had improved because of reined in capacity plans. We are on track to hire around 5,000 new employees by the end of the year, and we are currently more than halfway towards that goal.

The airline said in the statement that it will fly about 1/3 of its scheduled flights for the next several days as it recovers.

In addition to cancellations due to the snowstorm, Southwest is also struggling with a staffing shortage in some locations. The airline declared a state of operational emergency at the airport after receiving an unexplained high number of absences. Southwest Airlines will use mandatory overtime and require staff to report for work when they are sick, according to a memo leaked to employees. As noted by the Denver Post, Southwest spokesperson Chris Perry denied that the callouts were part of a coordinated effort from employees.

The failure got the attention of Congress. The causes of the disruptions will be looked at by the committee, according to the statement released on Tuesday by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

For Southwest passenger Taylor McClain, 34, the saga started last Thursday, when his morning flight from Salt Lake City into Chicago Midway was canceled. He rebooked for a 3 p.m. that didn’t end up departing until 9 p.m.

The return of McClain to Utah has been very frightening. He was due to leave Chicago on Monday. It was canceled. He’s only able to change it for Thursday night.

An Airborne Pilot’s Night at the Airport with a Changed Flight Plane? An Investigation of a Denver, Colorado, Business Traveler

He is lucky to be with his parents but he won’t be able to get the dog back in time.

Helane Becker, an aviation analyst with Cowen, an investment bank and financial services company, says Southwest needs to bring those tools, in the form of internal software systems, up to date.

“It’s not only their customer-facing systems, it’s their crew scheduling and so on,” Becker says. Southwest has always been behind when it comes to technology.

Southwest has a system called a “point-to-point” where planes flying from destination to destination pick up staff along the way. Point-to-point systems have their advantages, as they can offer direct and more affordable flights because the destinations they stop at typically have less air traffic, but flight schedules can quickly fall apart once one route gets canceled.

Southwest pilots take off from one city and then fly to a bunch of other cities. There’s a flight crew change somewhere in there, and then it flies one or two more legs across the country and spend the night,” Bangs says.

As a result, “when you get a weather situation like this, you have all sorts of pilots and flight attendants that can no longer get to where they need to be, because quite often flight crews are not based at the same city or they don’t live at the same city that they’re based out of,” she says. “So when there is bad weather, everything gets out of place.”

One of the passengers lives in Denver with his wife and their two young children. The family was visiting New York City, where they were celebrating together — a wedding anniversary and his daughter’s birthday.

On Christmas Eve the family was going to fly home. Before they went to the airport, Lenz checked his phone app to make sure everything was okay.

It wasn’t very good. The flight was canceled. He was on the phone for hours, but couldn’t reach an agent. So, he used an app on his phone to rebook — for Dec. 28. He finally reached an agent on Monday. He asked, “Do you think we will get this resolved by the time we leave?”

The agent reassured him, and even moved the flight to the 27th. He says that his Tuesday flight was one of the canceled ones.

The Southwest Airlines “Shaved” Margin’s Why Airlines Are Not Solving Their Customers’ Problems, and How They’ve Been Done

Finally, the family decided to rent a car and drive back to Denver — a 26-hour drive. “There’s a place about halfway through in Illinois that’s 13 hours from here and 13 hours from from Denver. “Our goal is for us to take a quick rest at the hotel and then get back into our hotel again later in the evening so that we can go out for dinner Thursday night,” he says.

As badly as things have gone for both Southwest and its customers, the company has owned up to its problems, says Becker. She says that they’re in front from a PR perspective. “They’re saying they’re buying meals for people, they’re putting people up in hotel rooms. They’re trying to get you to where you need to go. They’re reimbursing you. They’re buying tickets for other airlines.

The failure of the airlines means customers end up paying the price, according to Potter. And that will continue as long as the carriers are allowed to “keep running these razor thin margins where mass delays and cancellations [are] just a storm or a mechanics strike or an IT software issue away.”

Travelers at airports are waiting in line for two hours or more to rebook their flights, which isn’t likely to happen soon. A few passengers are sleeping on airport floors since they don’t get new flights until after the New Year.

Buttigieg says he spoke directly to Southwest CEO Bob Jordan on Tuesday about the thousands of flights that have been canceled this week with no immediate indication of when passengers can rebook.

The Story of Car Rentals and Southwest Airlines in Wichita, Kansas: A Tribute to the Miami Airlines “It’s Breaking My Heart”

“I made clear that our department will be holding them accountable for their responsibilities to customers, both to get them through this situation and to make sure that this can’t happen again.”

Passenger Trisha Jones told CNN at the airport in Atlanta that she and her partner had been traveling for five days, trying to get home to Wichita, Kansas, after disembarking from a cruise at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Jones said that because they were in Fort Lauderdale they were able to CarRentals a car so they could go see their family for Christmas. “We’ve seen a lot of families who are sleeping on the floor, and it just breaks my heart.”

The secretary said he told CEO Jordan that he expects Southwest to proactively offer refunds and expense reimbursement to affected passengers without them having to ask.

Buttigieg told CNN the Department of Transportation is prepared to pursue fines against Southwest if there is evidence that the company has failed to meet its legal obligations, but he added that the department will be taking a closer look at consistent customer service problems at the airline.

All of the other parts of the aviation system are getting better each day, but this airline has been moving in the opposite direction.

Jordan acknowledged the problems with the response, but said he did not expect any major changes to Southwest’s procedures.

“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,” said Jordan.

“Every airline in the country is jam-packed right now, so your odds of even finding a seat — let alone at an even halfway decent price — get smaller by the hour,” Potter said.

Potter said that travelers in the thick of this should save their receipts, which include other flights, a rental car and nights at the hotel.