Why Southwest isn’t the only airline at risk of a cancellation slump
Southwest may be back on track for now, but it may only be a matter of time before another airline — and its travelers — experience similar chaos. The airline canceled more than 15,000 flights between Dec. 22 and Dec. 29, according to FlightAware, which tracks air traffic in real time.
“We’ve seen this happen across the industry over the summer, two summers now, where it’s not the storm that Mother Nature delivers that wreaks havoc, it’s the storm of management teams that are unable to weather the recovery from the storm,” said Dennis Tajer, a longtime American Airlines pilot and spokesman for his pilots’ union, Allied Pilots Association.
Southwest blamed overloaded technology for its inability to recover from extreme winter conditions during the holidays, but employees say that’s not the only problem and industry experts say Southwest is not alone.
USA TODAY reached out to Southwest to comment on specific criticisms and was redirected to the airline’s existing recovery effort statements.
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Why is Southwest Airlines having so many problems?
“The problem isn’t staffing at all,” Lyn Montgomery, president of the Southwest TWU Local 556 flight attendant union, which represents more than 13,000 flight attendants, told USA TODAY. “It is in fact the failure of senior management to ensure that their IT infrastructure can support the growth and expansion that we have taken over the years,”
Southwest said it was “full and prepared” ahead of the holiday weekend, but inclement weather across the country displaced much of its fleet and crews and pushed planning tools to capacity. .
“Our network is very complex and the operation of the airline relies on all elements, especially the planes and crews that stay in motion to where they need to go,” the Southwest CEO said Tuesday. , Bob Jordan, in a video in which he also apologized. .
With so many parts moving around, the airline told USA TODAY, “our tools struggled to get flight crews and planes in the right places.”
Southwest has reduced operations to about a third of daily flights through Thursday to give itself time to “catch up.” In the meantime, the airline said it had to turn to the cumbersome and tedious task of manually scheduling crews.
“It’s like trying to beat someone who has a MacBook Pro and you have an abacus,” Tajer said.
Other airlines that have rebounded typically use cloud- or internet-based tools that make them more robust and nimble in the event of major disruptions, according to independent travel industry analyst Robert Mann, president of RW Mann and former executive of airlines like American and TWA. .
“…clearly, we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade the systems for these extreme circumstances so that we’re never faced with what’s happening right now again,” Jordan said.
Raising red flags
Southwest flight attendants and pilots say they’ve been reporting problems for years.
“For more than a decade, leadership failures to adapt, innovate and protect our operations have resulted in repeated system disruptions, countless disappointed passengers and millions in lost profits,” said the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association in a statement. “…this problem began many years ago when the complexity of our network outstripped its ability to withstand weather and technological disruptions.”
Mann agreed that the South West’s rapid growth, especially as it ramped up services when travel resumed in 2021. The airline is the country’s largest carrier by daily flights and domestic passengers .
“When they have a problem, they have a bigger problem,” he said.
Montgomery pointed out how Southwest has expanded its international flights and has staff speaking the destination language, “yet the technology hasn’t really kept up” with that growth.
“This (crisis) is not new, but it is certainly the most catastrophic of this nature that we have seen,” she said, adding that “‘micro-crises’ are happening in between.” .
As early as 2016, she said flight attendants were waiting for policy changes. That year, a blackout internally dubbed Technado left Crews stranded for days after a faulty router caused a 12-hour system outage.
In 2018, TWU Local 556 told the general manager that “flight attendants were very, very tired and we were struggling to get the basics done,” like a meal or getting into hotel rooms in time. timely, according to Montgomery. “These are things that have made our job really difficult,” she said.
The airline said on Thursday: “We have a lot of work ahead of us, including investing in new solutions to manage large-scale disruptions.”
Unfortunately, these changes won’t happen overnight, according to Mann. “It will probably take a year or two to resolve from a systemic perspective,” he said.
Investing in human capital
Randy Barnes, president of TWU Local 555, which represents ground workers in the Southwest, says the company also needs to invest in its employees.
“Floor workers need more support. Many of our employees have been forced to work 16-hour or 18-hour days this holiday season,” the union leader said in a statement, noting that some workers have had frostbite last week. “While it can be complicated, especially during the holiday season, we need to consider better flight spacing during extreme weather events in the freezing cold of winter – as well as the extreme heat of summer.”
“If airline managers had planned better, the collapse we have seen in recent days could have been mitigated or avoided,” Barnes added.
While that was happening, Montgomery said flight attendants were placed in hotels with no heat or water, and there were transportation issues for staff where there was heavy snow.
Others identifying as Southwest employees on social media shared a myriad of frustrationsincluding having to pay for hotel rooms out of pocket when they couldn’t get to the airline and sleeping on airport floors.
“It’s not just IT. It’s human capital,” Tajer said.
The airline has repeatedly apologized for travel disruptions over the past week and expressed gratitude to employees for “showing up in every way”.
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An industry-wide problem
Southwest is not the only airline to face these kinds of challenges.
“The glory days for Southwest and other airlines like American Airlines that were plagued by computer issues with schedules were in the 80s and 90s, and you still have that computer system,” Tajer said. .
Meanwhile, Mann says there has been growing customer demand.
“The whole industry has been striving to meet the number of customer demands.” Mann said. “It’s stretched the really thin workforce across the industry.”
He referred to the summer of 2021, when airlines like Spirit ended up canceling hundreds of flights due to stormy weather and operational issues, leaving passengers stranded at airports.
Of course, the crews are also blocked.
“We are going through the same thing and we want the same end result: we want to take you where you need to go so that we can also go home to our families,” Tajer said.
Southwest pilots are asking for communication tools to help displaced crews stay in constant contact with the airline.
“I flew a trip that was cut short by the weather, and when I call they say, ‘Well, where are you? I just landed on one of your planes,” the American Airlines pilot said. “It’s demoralizing, and it’s alarming.”
He and Mann hope other airlines will take stock after Southwest’s struggles.
“We’re not going to take a lap as we recovered well during this storm,” Tajer said. “We know our time in the headlines is just one event away until we lay down the real foundations.”
“You try to use these things as a learning experience,” Mann said.
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