The Disruption Problems at Southwest Airlines: Why It Happened, Why It Arose, And Why It Hasn’t

She said in a statement that the issues at Southwest Airlines go beyond weather. The committee will be looking into the causes of the disruptions.

For Southwest, the situation started unraveling before the Christmas weekend. Potter said that it’s clear that something has gone badly wrong if there is extensive cancellation on Monday.

Our IT infrastructure is outdated and that is what went wrong. “It can’t handle the number of pilots, flight attendants that we have in the system, with our complex route network.

Watterson explained that Southwest’s crew schedulers worked furiously to put a new schedule together, matching available crew with aircraft that were ready to fly. But the Federal Aviation Administration strictly regulates when flight crews can work, complicating Southwest’s scheduling efforts.

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.”

From Houston, Texas, to Florida, to Cleveland, Ohio, to Denver, Colo., people are sharing photos and videos of crowded baggage claim areas. At Southwest, the customer service phone line’s hold times averaged more than two hours, sometimes reaching four hours, according to Colorado Public Radio.

Southwest spokesperson Jay McVay said in a news conference at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport on Monday night the airline will do everything possible to right the challenges passengers have experienced, including “hotels, ride assistance, vans … rental cars to try and make sure these folks get home as quickly as possible.”

Thousands of Delta pilots picketed at major airports this summer, calling for higher pay and highlighting staff concerns as passengers faced flight cancellations during the Fourth of July holiday rush. Last month, Delta pilots voted to authorize a strike after negotiations for a new contract were paused.

The Southwest Airlines Flight Hotline: Customer Service Efforts in the Light of Wednesday Night’s Airfield Cancellation Dispatch

Relief is still a few days away for passengers booked with Southwest Airlines this week, as the beleaguered airline continues to grapple with what US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has referred to as a complete meltdown of the system.

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

To recover, Jordan told the Wall Street Journal the company plans to operate just over a third of its schedule in upcoming days to give itself the ability for crews to get into the right positions.

We had a difficult day today. Jordan told the WSJ.com that they will probably have a hard day tomorrow as they work their way out of the situation.

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

Employees also said they have not been able to communicate with the airline, the president of the union that represents Southwest’s Flight Attendants told CNN Monday.

If you’ve lost your way and you’re unable to reach a customer service agent, the founder of Scott’s Cheap Flight suggests you try an international number.

“The main hotline for US airlines will be clogged with other passengers getting rebooked. ScottKeyes said to call as many of the airline’s international offices as possible to get through to an agent.

“As the storm continued to sweep across the country it continued to impact many of our larger stations and so the cancellations just compiled one after another to 100 to 150 to 1,000,” Jay McVay said in a press conference at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport on Monday night.

The other major airlines have a normal hub. We fly a point-to-point network, which can put our crews in the wrong places, without airplanes.”

Mc Vay said that the company’s first priority is safety. “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 can to make sure people get home quickly, and that they would use all of their resources.

“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.”

The New York Times: Southwest Airlines, Greyhound, Intercity Buses and the NY Airport Winter Weather Fixing and Reopening on December 31, 2018

The news conference took place before the announcement in the terminal that the next available seat would be on December 31st. The agent said Southwest would be providing buses to area hotels and assured that “we will have sufficient rooms for all customers who are affected by this disruption.”

The Department of Transportation said it is investigating Southwest’s spate of cancellations and customer service delays. President Joe Biden said his administration “is working to ensure airlines are held accountable.”

“From what I can tell, Southwest is unable to locate their own crews, let alone their own passengers, baggage or both,” said Buttigieg, who also talked with the union leaders of the airline.

He told CNN they had been having issues for the past 20 months. “We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”

He said that the airline’s processes haven’t changed since the 1990s. The problem lies in the programs used to connect us to the airplanes, and that’s a problem throughout the entire 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 bus service in the nation, issued a notice on Monday that services in the upper Northeast will be disrupted or canceled due to the winter weather. Buffalo,Cleveland and Syracuse are affected.

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.

Van de Ven’s Southwest Airlines Staffing Problem: Challenges, Progress, and Perspectives for the Next Optimal Executive Searches

In a videotaped speech, Mike Van de Ven said that they aren’t where they want to be with staffing and specifically with flight crews. A transcript of the recording was shared with CNN at the time. He said that they needed more staffing cushion for the unexpected and they are bringing new people on board daily.

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan told his employees in a memo that part of their problem was a lack of tools. “We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that.”

Jordan said that the lack of tools was a part of what they were suffering. “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.

“We have reined in our capacity plans to adjust to the current staffing environment, and our ontime performance has improved, accordingly,” said Kelly on October 21. “We are aggressively hiring to a goal of approximately 5,000 new employees by the end of this year, and we are currently more than halfway toward that goal.”

After canceling roughly 13,000 flights in the last few days, the airline is planning to remain on a reduced flying schedule for a few more days, its CEO said in a statement late Tuesday.

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 last week at the Denver airport after receiving “an unusually high number of absences.” In a memo that was leaked, Southwest Airlines said that if staff members are calling out sick, it will use mandatory overtime to fire them, and that they would need a doctor’s note. As noted by the Denver Post, Southwest spokesperson Chris Perry denied that the callouts were part of a coordinated effort from employees.

Congress is interested in that failure. On Tuesday, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, released a statement saying the committee would look into “the causes of these disruptions and its impact to customers.”

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.

It was even worse when he came back to Utah. He was supposed to leave Chicago late Monday. It ended up being canceled. Now, the soonest he’s been able to reschedule is for Thursday night.

A Case Study with Southwest Airlines: Getting the Crews in the Right Places When You Can’t Get Back to Where You Need To Be

He says he is lucky to be with his parents, but he will burn a lot of vacation time and pay more than he should for a dog he can’t get back to.

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.

“We don’t have the normal hub like the other major airlines do,” Capt. Mike Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told CNN Tuesday. A point to point network allows us to get our crews in the wrong places.

Southwest uses a system called a “point-to-point” that allows its planes to fly from one location to another. There are advantages to point-to-point systems, one of which is the fact that they can offer direct and more affordable flights because the destinations they stop at typically have less air traffic.

“What you’re doing with Southwest is, you’re checking a bag from the first city to the second city, and then rechecking it into the third city,” he said. “Whereas with American, Delta or United, you’re checking a bag from the origin city all the way to the destination.”

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. When there’s bad weather, everything gets out of position.

One of those passengers, Skyler Lenz, lives with his wife and two young children in Denver. His daughter’s birthday and a wedding anniversary were celebrated by the family in New York City.

The family was going to fly home on Christmas Eve. Before leaving for the airport, he checked his phone app to make sure everything was okay.

It wasn’t good. The flight was canceled. He was on the phone for hours, but couldn’t reach an agent. He used an app on his phone to make a rebook. He reached an agent on Monday. He asked, “Do you believe this will be resolved by the time we leave?”

The agent reassured him, and even moved the flight to the 27th. “But that’s when everything started to get canceled,” he says — including his Tuesday flight.

How Southwest has gotten their ills: What they’ve done to the family of Denver, Michigan, and now they’re gone

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 to take a quick break at the hotel and then pick it up later in the day so we can make it to Thursday night.”

Southwest has owned up to its problems as badly as they have gone for its customers. She says that they’re out in front when it comes to PR. They’re buying food for people, and they’re putting people in hotel rooms. They’re doing their best to get you where you need to go. They’re reimbursing you. They are buying tickets on other airlines.

Potter says the airlines’ failures means customers pay the price. 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.”

The mass cancellations have travelers at airports waiting in line for two or more hours to rebook their new flights, which, unfortunately, won’t occur anytime soon. Some passengers are forced to sleep on the airport floors because new flights are not being given until after the New Year.

Buttigieg contacted Southwest CEO Bob Jordan on Tuesday about the thousands of flights that have been canceled this week, with no indication of when passengers will be allowed to rebook.

Passenger Trisha Jones and her partner’s flight cancellation: “It breaks my heart” — Southwest Communications Secretary Bethe Anihilation

“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’ family lives in the Tampa bay area, so they were able to rent a car for Jones to see them on Christmas. “We’ve seen a lot of people sleeping on the floor, and it just breaks my heart.”

The secretary told CEOJordan that he expects Southwest to give refunds and reimbursements to passengers without them having to ask.

The senators called on Southwest to give significant monetary compensation to customers who have had their holidays ruined by the flight problems.

“While all of the other parts of the aviation system have been moving toward recovery and getting better each day, it’s actually been moving the opposite direction with this airline,” said Buttigieg.

While Jordan acknowledged problems with the company response, the statement suggested that he did not foresee massive changes to Southwest’s procedures in response to the mass cancellations.

We need to double down on our plans to upgrade systems so that we don’t have to deal with the situation again.

“You can find a seat at any airline in the country as long as there is at least one seat available, but your chances of actually finding a seat diminish by the hour if you’re only going to pay a decent price,” Potter said.

Potter said that travelers should save all of their receipts: other flights, a rental car, nights at the hotel, meals, anything.

The Southwest Airlines Payroll Support Program: a response to the Southwest pandemic aid and the aftermath of the Super-Circulos Disease

The cap runs through Saturday and applies in many of the US and Latin American markets where Southwest also flies. United spokesman Josh Freed could not immediately specify a dollar amount for the cap.

There are flights from San Diego to Orlando with fares of more than $2,000 posted by a traveler. The passenger was looking to rebook a canceled Southwest flight.

“We continue to get people to their destinations as safely and quickly as possible this busy holiday season and our latest effort includes capping fares in select cities to make sure our flights are available to as many customers as possible,” Freed told CNN.

Making the travel nightmare worse, Southwest has a policy of not rebooking customers on rival airlines. Southwest Airlines does not allow its agents to rebook passengers on other airlines because they do not have interline agreements with other airlines.

The US government gave more than $54 billion in aid when the transportation industry was crippled by the coronaviruses.

Southwest Airlines received more than $7 billion from that program. But its system had two major meltdowns in the past 18 months, including this week’s massive system failure the likes of which the aviation industry has never seen.

[The pandemic aid] “is water under the bridge at this point,” said Robert Mann, a Port Washington, New York-based airline industry analyst. “The only distinguishing factors at this point are to what degree carriers have satisfied obligations that permit them to either return to paying dividends or return to paying higher officer salaries.”

The airlines received financial assistance when air travel plunged in early 2020. The transportation sector has a lot of employees who are subject to training requirements as well as certificates that could cause flights to be stopped for a long time if not prevented.

The Payroll Support Program started in March of 2020 and has been updated twice in the last two years.

The federal aid to airlines, which was a mix of grants and loans, came with some caveats: The airlines had to use the funds exclusively to continue paying wages, salaries and benefits to employees; and, for specific periods of time, they couldn’t conduct furloughs or layoffs; issue dividends or stock buybacks; or increase pay for executives.

The Southwest Airlines System During the 2021 Airborne Pandemic Aid Meltdown: A Report on the Impact of the Post-Pandemic Assistance Program

“It worked,” Gary Kelly, Southwest’s former chief executive officer, said in December 2021 during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing to examine the impact of the PSP.

The funds that were received through each round of the PSP were only used to pay qualified employee salaries, wages, and benefits. “We did not cut pay rates; we did not cut hours; we did not cut benefits; we did not layoff; we did not furlough. We actually raised our minimum pay to $15 per hour, effective August 1, 2021.”

Kelly noted that Southwest’s financially conservative approach that put it in a healthy position entering 2020, and the airline’s cost-cutting throughout the pandemic, had it on good footing for the future.

Earlier this year, as Southwest and other airlines struggled with staffing shortages, two House Democrats asked the Treasury Department’s inspector general to investigate whether any of the PSP funds were used for the buyouts, which ultimately helped contribute to staffing shortages and service disruptions when demand returned.

The PSP amounts were based on the carriers’ 2019 salary levels, which themselves were based on pre-pandemic flying levels. In April 2020, airline passenger traffic plummeted 96% and stayed 60% below 2019 levels in 2020, according to the US Government Accountability Office.

Mann said that no carrier was operating a level of flying in 2019. “In fact, while saying ‘no layoffs,’ numerous carriers cut hours and related pay. Many others started voluntary separation agreements that paid less hours and salary dollars in exchange for early retirements or similar.

“Could have been as simple as fuel, interest payments, other overheads,” he said. “But the idea that PSP would have paid for IT upgrades that a carrier saw no need for is not realistic.”

The problem and the Department of Transportation have made him think that the carrier has a different opinion on what upgrades are needed. “They’ll spend their own money now to research, develop and implement new systems.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/business/southwest-pandemic-aid-meltdown/index.html

Reply to Sens. Markey and Blumenthal’s “Weakening” on Southwest Airlines’ Holiday Cancellation Regulations

Democratic Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut issued a new letter Tuesday calling on Southwest to pay up for what they say were avoidable holiday cancellations.

“After days of trying to operate as much of our full schedule across the busy holiday weekend, we reached a decision point to significantly reduce our flying to catch up,” he said.

In an interview with PBS Newshour, Buttigieg described such practices as “unacceptable” and threatened to hold the airline to its own stated intentions.

“We’re going to expect them to go beyond the letter of the law in terms of how they treat passengers, making sure they pay for things like hotels, ground travel expenses, meals and of course, refunds,” Buttigieg said.

“Employees were left to their own devices. The information is applicable. He told NPR’s Morning Edition that they weren’t given tools to do their jobs or leadership to answer questions.

The airline industry has long been wary of regulations, saying that they ultimately put the cost burden on the customer. Southwest is better suited to say what needs to change than the DOT is.

Congress is interested in whether the airline will compensate customers. The chair of the Senate Commerce Committee said Tuesday that an investigation will be launched.

Any passenger who saw their flight canceled is entitled to receive a cash refund plus any extra purchases they made, under current DOT rules.

Southwest says that all customers traveling through Jan. 2, 2023 have the option to rebook or travel standby without fees. But for those looking to get a cash payment, the company has opened a special self-service portal for processing.

Unclaimed Luggage Flight Cancellations During a Winter Storm: Bri Murphy, Peter Ferguson, and William J. McGee

William J. McGee is the senior fellow for Aviation and Travel at the American Economic Liberties Project.

“I want everyone who is dealing with the problems we’ve been facing, whether you haven’t been able to get to where you need to go or you’re one of our heroic employees caught up in a massive effort to stabilize the airline, to know is that we’re doing everything we can to return to a normal operation,” Jordan said in the video. Please also hear that I’m extremely sorry.

Bri Murphy, and her husband, Peter Ferguson, planned to fly from Nashville to Denver on Christmas Day. The pair were at the airport when their flight was delayed by Southwest. Now, they’re waiting to get on another flight.

But their luggage, the pair soon found out, did make it to Denver without them. Murphy’s father-in-law, who lives in Denver, was able to drive to the airport and find two of their suitcases. But a third — containing Christmas gifts and Murphy’s medication — is still somewhere in the pile.

While Murphy waits to be reconnected with her suitcase, she continues to rack up hundreds of dollars in costs, transporting herself to and from airports and replacing some of her belongings.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/29/1145846556/unclaimed-luggage-flight-cancellations-winter-storm-southwest

Modeling the Airlines’ Point-to-Point System: Reducing Liability and Preventing Flight Misfortunes during the First Two Years of Covid-19

The point to point system used to be the norm for airlines until the federal government deregulated them in 1978. Most major airlines now use a hub-and-spoke system where routes connect to a hub.

“After a summer of flight cancellations, delays, and withheld refunds, eliminating the airlines’ liability shield will shift the power back to consumers, state AGs, and state courts and legislatures, forcing the airlines to finally stop mistreating and cheating flyers,” McGee said in a press release announcing the model legislation.

After Brittney Buckley’s flight from Denver to Chicago, where her family lives, got canceled, she was able to rebook another flight that got her there days before Christmas.

Although the airline told her that her bags would be waiting for her in Chicago, the airtags, a tracking device by Apple, on her luggage — containing winter clothes, Christmas presents and her prescription medicine — showed that that they were still in Denver. She suspects that they’re somewhere buried under the mountains of bags that now litter the airport’s baggage claim.

“I’m just one of many millions of people waiting in this corporate machine to get an answer,” she said. We do not have much power. I’m just waiting until a few days have passed so I can get another update on my luggage. At this point, I have written it all off.”

The dire situation, which has exasperated passengers and caught the eye of government regulators, has magnified this week as other major airlines recovered from the extreme cold, ice and snow that gripped much of the United States over the holiday weekend.

According to a CNN review of flight data, the company has reduced its capacity by around two thirds and apologized for the cancellation of its daily flights.

The early days of the Pandemic in 2020 were disrupted due to weather and other factors such as Covid-19, which resulted in a major industry-wide disruption.

The data for September was released by the bureau. To ensure a fair comparison, CNN only analyzed the carrier’s data from January to September in previous years.

Delicate House of Cards: Restarting Southwest in a Shutdown Model with Autonomous Crews and Plane Shifts

Passengers traveling between small cities are usually required to change planes when flying to a hub. But that model has the operational advantage of quickly flying crews and planes out of the hub to where they’re needed.

Southwest built a delicate house of cards which could quickly fall apart when they encountered a problem, because of manual scheduling.

Watterson said that they would make great progress, then some other disruption would happen and it wouldn’t work out. “So, we spent multiple days where we kind of got close to finishing the problem, and then it had to be reset.”