The Southwest Airlines Holiday Packet: What Happens When Flight Crews and Crews Go Wild in the Southwest Helicopter Regime?
“We were fully staffed and prepared for the approaching holiday weekend when the severe weather swept across the continent, where Southwest is the largest carrier in 23 of the top 25 travel markets in the U.S,” Southwest Airlines says in a statement. “As we continue the work to recover our operation, we have made the decision to continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one third of our schedule for the next several days.”
The rules governing refunds are not clear about delays in flights, hotel rooms, or ground transportation. Southwest will pay the costs of overnight delays that they were in charge of, but it’s not clear whether they’ll honor that policy because of the role the weather played in the delays.
Problems with connecting flight crews to their schedules are among the issues that have made the airline’s struggle to accommodate the holiday rush worse. It is difficult for employees to access crew scheduling services.
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 airline seems to have few reasons to cancel many flights with the clear skies on Monday. Potter says it is a full-blown meltdown.
From Houston, Texas, and Tampa, Fla., to Cleveland, Ohio, and Denver, Colo., passengers are sharing photos and video of overwhelmed baggage claim areas and long lines at reservation counters. At Southwest, the customer service phone line’s hold times averaged more than two hours, sometimes reaching four hours, according to Colorado Public Radio.
He has flown Southwest for the past 10 years but will wait and see how the company performs before making a decision to fly with the airline again.
Delta Pilots Are Back in Business: Southwest Airlines Cancels Flights Tuesday Even After A Fourth of July Holiday Throat In The Presence of a Heavy Rain
Delta pilots picketed at airports for higher wages and more staff concerns during the Fourth of July holiday rush, as passengers faced flight disruptions. The Delta pilots voted last month to authorize a strike, after negotiations for a new contract were paused.
Air travelers hoping for clear skies on Tuesday will have to wait a couple more days if they are 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.
Internal processes and information technology are outdated. Southwest’s scheduling system hasn’t changed much since the 1990s, according to Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.
“We had a tough 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.
The passengers in line at the Southwest ticket counter at the Atlanta airport weren’t happy about it.
Customers were unable to talk to a representative because calls made by CNN to Southwest did not go through. Southwest told CNN that they are staffed to answer calls.
If you’ve been left in the lurch and your efforts to reach a customer service agent are going nowhere, the founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights suggests trying an international number.
“The main hotline for US airlines will be clogged with other passengers getting rebooked. To get through to an agent quickly, call any one of the airline’s dozens of international offices,” Scott Keyes said.
“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.
“With those cancellations and as a result, we end up with flight crews and airplanes that are out of place and not in the cities that they need to be in to continue to run our operations.”
Safety is the company’s first priority right now according to McVay. “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.
“We will do everything that we need to do to right the challenges that we’ve had right now,” he said, including “hotels, ride assistance, vans … rental cars to try and make sure these folks get home as quickly 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.
The Meltdown of Southwest Airlines, the American Airlines Airline and Greyhound in the Mid-Inflationary World, Revisited
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. 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 will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan,” USDOT said in a statement.
widespread criticism of the airline’s operations was made as a result of the operational meltdown. Gary Kelly, the airline’s Chairman and former CEO, was criticized in a letter published by the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.
He told CNN that they have been having issues for the past 20 months. These types of meltdowns have been more commonplace in the past, it has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.
He said they’re still using the technology from the ’90s and processes from when the airline was a tenth of the size. “For an operation we have today, it’s just not scaled to what it is.”
— 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.
On Monday evening, Greyhound issued a service alert saying that many of its services in the upper northeastern region will be canceled or disrupted for the foreseeable future due to winter weather. Affected cities include 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 System: An Afterglow from the January 2011 Flight Disruption When Taylor McClain’s Flight Rebooking Was Cancelled
“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 has also acknowledged the company’s outdated infrastructure. In a memo obtained by CNN, CEO Bob Jordan stated that the need to do modernizing was important.
Jordan said that there was a lack of tools. “We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that.”
Gary Kelly told analysts on a call the company made adjustments to prevent a meltdown like the one they experienced last month.
“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 currently more than halfway towards our goal of 5,000 new employees by the end of the year, and we are aggressively hiring to that goal.
The airline has also begun notifying customers that it expects to fly a “full schedule” on Friday, after more than a week of massive flight disruptions.
The company’s internal software systems seem to have turned a normal problem into an astonishing disaster, despite the massive winter storm that caused initial flight disruptions.
That failure has attracted the attention of Congress. The chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation released a statement on Tuesday that said the committee would look into the causes of the disruptions.
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.
McClain’s return to Utah has been even more harrowing. He was scheduled to leave Chicago late Monday. It was canceled. The last thing he’s been able to change is Thursday night.
An Aircraft Pilot’s Dilemma About Southwest Airlines and the First Flight he Hebbs: “At the Turn of a Pilot, You Can’t Get There”
He says he will burn multiple days of vacation, absorb four days worth of extra kennel fees for the dog he cannot return to, and be lucky to be with his parents.
Helane Becker, an aviation analyst with Cowen, said that Southwest needs to bring internal software systems up to date in order to have those tools.
Southwest Airlines doesn’t have a normal hub, according to the vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. Our crews can be in the wrong places without airplanes because we fly a point-to-point network.
Another key factor is Southwest’s heavily reliance on shorter, point-to-point flights, rather than a “hub and spoke” model of many of its largest competitors. In fair weather, it’s a system that has worked well for them. But in inclement weather, it can cause problems, says Kathleen Bangs, a former commercial airline pilot and spokesperson for FlightAware.
With Southwest, however, “their pilots take off in the morning from one city, then they fly to two, three, four, five, six 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. “When there is bad weather, everything tends to move out of position.”
One of those passengers, Skyler Lenz, lives with his wife and two young children in Denver. The family was visiting New York City, where they were celebrating together — a wedding anniversary and his daughter’s birthday.
The family flew out on the 21st, and planned to fly home on Christmas Eve. Just before they departed for the airport, Lenz checked his phone app “to make sure everything was good.”
It wasn’t very good. The flight was canceled as well. He was on the phone for hours, but couldn’t reach an agent. He rebook on his phone using the app. He finally called an agent on Monday. He asked, “Do you think this is going to be resolved by the time we fly out?”
The agent reassured him, and even moved the flight to the 27th. He says that his Tuesday flight was canceled at that time.
What can Southwest Airlines do about it? Comment on a Denver-based traveler’s frustration with the frustration they’ve seen in the past
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. So our goal is to take a quick breather at the hotel and then pick it up again so we can be there Thursday night,” Lenz says.
Southwest Airlines will take a long time to regain the trust of the public. While other airlines were impacted by the weather, Southwest had a complete breakdown at the worst possible time, he told CNN Travel.
Potter says that the airline’s failures mean customers end up paying 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. People who have not been able to get new flights until after the New Year are sleeping on the floor of the airport.
The airlines capped prices on some routes to get stranded passengers on their flights.
One traveler posted a screenshot showing flights from San Diego to Orlando with American, Delta and United fares that cost more than $2,000. The passenger was going to rebook a flight.
Freed told CNN that capping fares in a few select cities will make sure that flights are available to as many customers as possible.
However, that’s still not mollifying questions about how the airline’s systems could allow things to go so wrong and demands they not happen again. There is a firm line between the Department of Transportation and Southwest.
What can Southwest do about canceled flights? A conversation with CEOs of domestic airline companies, NBC News analyst, and Ms. Buttigieg
“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.
“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.”
In an NBC News interview, Buttigieg said that the airline told him they would go above and beyond what’s required of them. “I’m looking to make sure they actually do that, and if they don’t, we are in a position to levy tens of thousands of dollars per violation per passenger in fines.”
The Department will enforce its powers to hold Southwest accountable if they don’t fulfill their promise to reimburse passengers for their alternate transportation costs.
In June, when thousands of flights were canceled due tostaff shortages, Buttigieg met with the CEOs of major domestic airlines and asked them how they’d fix operations in writing.
“Employees were left to their own devices. […] He told Morning Edition they weren’t given the necessary tools to do their jobs, nor were they given the leadership to answer questions and provide solutions.
A joint investigation of Southwest Airlines under the Transportation Department and the Department of Transportation (DOT) Regulatory Impact on Airline Customers and their Travel Organizations
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 decide what needs to change than the DOT, according to Murray.
Congress is also watching whether the airline will compensate customers. The Senate Commerce Committee will investigate, the chair said on Tuesday.
The DOT rules state that passengers who saw their flights canceled are entitled to a prompt cash refunds, along with additional purchases, such as bag fees or seat assignments.
Southwest says that customers have the option to rebook or travel without fees through January 2, 2023. But for those looking to get a cash payment, the company has opened a special self-service portal for processing.
If Southwest does not cover the costs, we will investigate and enforce, buttigieg said. “Anyone facing denied or delayed compensation can file a complaint with us and we’ll follow up.”
Other US airlines flying in the same weather conditions recovered days earlier from the storm disruptions that slammed much of the Lower 48 in the days leading up to Christmas.
“Our deepest apologies to our customers, employees, and all affected by this disruption only go so far,” the statement read.
Delta, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines: Resolving the Covid19 Cancellation Problem with Electronic Scheduling in the Week after the Pandemic
The early months of the Pandemic, in which Covid19 caused a major disruption in the airline industry, can be viewed as a reflection of the unpredictable cancellation rates among airlines.
The bureau only released data between December and September. To ensure a fair comparison, CNN only analyzed the carrier’s data from January to September in previous years.
United, American and Delta typically fly from smaller markets to hubs, requiring passengers flying between small cities to change planes. But that model has the operational advantage of quickly flying crews and planes out of the hub to where they’re needed.
Watterson noted that manual scheduling left Southwest building an incredibly delicate house of cards that could quickly tumble when the company encountered a problem.
“They would make great progress, and then some other disruption would happen, and it would unravel their work,” Watterson said. We spent a few days where we were close to resolving the problem, but it had to be reset.
Southwest Airlines was warned on Thursday by the DOT that it will face consequences if it fails to make right by stranded passengers.
The secretary told CEO Jordan he expects Southwest to offer refunds and expense reimbursement without them having to ask.
Rebuilding Customer Relations at Southwest Airlines after the Flight Collapse: Ryan Green apologized for Taking “Irregular Operations” seriously
Ryan Green, the airline’s chief commercial officer, promised to rebuild customer relations that had sunk to rock bottom, after he apologized for the collapse of services.
“My apology is the first stage of making things right after many plans changed and experiences were not up to your expectations,” Green said in the video.
He said he was sorry for the impact the challenges have had on employees and customers. We aim to do the right thing when we fall short, because we have a long and proud record of delivering on expectations.
When asked if the lack of lines at the Southwest counter speaks to the improvements being made, Hister said: “Perhaps it does, because there’s not long lines, people are not here complaining.” So, perhaps you know, the attempts to redeem themselves are working.
As extreme winter conditions swept much of the country last week — including important airports in Southwest’s network — Southwest’s plan for “irregular operations” passed the breaking point, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.
The airline said in a statement that the internal process requires multiple departments to manually redesign the airline’s schedule, and that the system works “the vast majority of the time.”
The crew scheduling system tool leaves a lot of the work of rebuilding that delicate network to be done manually if something goes wrong.
“It can’t see the best way to fix anything when flights are canceled,” said Brian Brown, president of Transport Workers Union Local 550, representing Southwest dispatchers and meteorologists. “It requires a lot more human intervention and human eyesight or brainpower and can only handle so much.”
Airline officials don’t necessarily know where our crews are because of the result. Crew schedulers in another department check to make sure that pilots and flight attendants meet federal work hours rules needed to keep inflight safety professionals from excessive fatigue.
Elaine Chao, who served as secretary of transportation during the Trump administration, described the Southwest Airlines breakdown as “a failure of unbelievable proportions.”
She told CNN it was “a perfect storm of all the things that have been going on with the company. It’s going to take them a very long time” to rebuild trust with consumers, she added.
She said they were unable to rebook her for a January 2 flight because it would’ve been too late. She and her family and friends lost money on food and lodging after the wedding was postponed.
She said that when they got ready to board, the captain came out and told them the flight had been canceled.
“While Southwest is being vague on how much they will reimburse, I would avoid any expensive hotels or restaurants. If you’re stuck at the airport, use the internet to find nearby hotels.
“Do a few Google searches such as ‘free things to do near me.’ I doubt Southwest is going to reimburse tours or other paid activities, so I would not book any expensive excursions that you cannot afford.”
The Southwest Airlines Meltdown Revisited: A First Arrival of a Warm-Weather Flight at the Tevatron
“We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made to realign Crew, their schedules, and our fleet,” the company said in a statement. “With another holiday weekend full of important connections for our valued Customers and Employees, we are eager to return to a state of normalcy.”
But it was a breakdown of the airline’s old computer system used for crew scheduling that has turned otherwise challenging weather-fueled disruptions into what experts have called an “unprecedented” airline meltdown.
It was a frigid minus 3 degrees in Denver, but the family had packed their winter coats and had only the warm-weather clothes they’d put on that morning in California. When they finally got back home to Memphis and stood in line with dozens of others to check on their luggage, it turned out their bags had been in Denver the whole time.
With the chaos she’s witnessed this week, Proveaux thought she wouldn’t see her bags again. On Wednesday night, to her surprise, the luggage was delivered to her door.
In an apology statement late Wednesday — and again on a media briefing call on Thursday — Southwest said passengers can apply online for baggage returns, flight refunds and travel expenses from this week’s disruption.
The company has faced criticism for its outdated scheduling software and communications systems, and the impact that has — not just on passengers but also its employees.
“I had to pull him off my plane, when he was trying to go home to see his family, so he could go work another flight just because he was at the airport,” she says.
Randy Barnes, president of the Transport Workers Union’s Local 555, which represents Southwest employees, said in a statement Wednesday that many Southwest ground workers had to work 16- or 18-hour shifts during the holiday season and were getting sick and experiencing frostbite.
Everyone is asking if Southwest can now deliver. The picture will make more sense as air traffic goes up Friday morning.
It would definitely be a relief if those planes were in the air again, and the luggage was no longer piled up. There is a mark on its back.
The way Southwest was able to get to this point in the aftermath of a massive winter storm that every other major US airline had under control was a cause for concern to top US government officials.
Buttigieg called Southwest’s troubles a complete “meltdown” and his remarks followed earlier apologies from airline CEO Jordan.
He intends to use the airline in the future, according to the man standing near Hister. I like Southwest. The bags are free, said Williams.
Mr. Mann said it would be a case-by-case basis. Booking an expensive flight might indicate to the airline you had a serious obligation you couldn’t miss, he said. He said to hold onto your receipts, use the Southwest tool, and have a look at how it goes.
When the Southwest flight that he was CarRentals CarRentals was canceled, MichaelQuidort had to replace his ticket on United. He said he paid United $295, but his original flight was $140, and when he tried to submit a claim, the Southwest system kept crashing. He plans to keep trying, but said he is “not that hopeful” that he’ll get reimbursed. He doesn’t have a lot of faith in the people to turn this around any time soon.
This is not the first time the airline has suffered a costly service meltdown. The Columbus Day weekend in 2021, it estimated, will cost $75 million. But there were far fewer passengers flying then and far fewer flights canceled.
Ms. Nastro also wondered whether passengers who incurred nonrefundable expenses — including for Airbnbs and all-inclusive hotels — would be covered under Southwest’s vague reimbursement policy. “I don’t know,” she said, “but there are a lot of cases like this.”
Caroline Neary’s flight from Houston to West Palm Beach, Fla., wasn’t canceled or delayed. But while the Ph.D. student arrived home on time, her baggage still has not arrived; she ended up wearing her mother’s clothes for the holiday. And, she said, she has spent $500 on clothes, toiletries and a suitcase so she could finish her travels. Ms. Neary said she spoke to Southwest on Monday to report the missing baggage and she didn’t expect to see it again for weeks. “Allegedly it’s in Baltimore,” she said by text message.
Families with kids are stuck at the airport. Flight attendants and pilots are sleeping. Vast piles of luggage — some with presents inside, some with medication — stuck in the wrong airport. Travelers were stuck on hold for hours.
According to airline analyst Richard Aboulafia, they have the best reputation for customer service. “They’re usually pretty good at responding to crises.”
Hillary Chang lost her bag while travelling through the Southwest disaster vortex and has 50,000 miles with her. Now, she says, “I’ve been thinking about it … I’m open to dating another airline.”
The president of the union representing Southwest pilots called the Christmas debacle “catastrophic” but toldNPR that he wasn’t surprised by it, and neither were most pilots.
missing Christmas with your family or spending a night on an airport floor with a toddler is not covered by the government.
Southwest Airlines Sensitively Expected to Lose $1.4-$25 Million in Revenue in a General Reionization Process
In Friday’s filing, Southwest said it expects to lose an estimated $400 million to $425 million in revenue. It said the remainder of the $725 million to $825 million estimated negative financial impact comes from covering an increase in operating expenses, including reimbursing travelers, and awarding them with the frequent-flyer points, as well as paying its employees.
The airline said that canceling more than 16,700 flights between December 21 and 29 will cost anywhere between $725 million and $825 million. Between $400 million and $425 million of the cost will come from lost ticket revenue that will be returned to customers.
compensation for customers, along with the cost of booking flights on other airlines, and the provision of 25,000 points to the frequent fliers accounts of affected customers are included in the other costs. There are also increased operating costs, such as additional compensation for employees, such as overtime pay.
Shares of Southwest
(LUV), which had already lost 8% of their value since December 21, lost another 2% in early trading Friday.
The costs did not include any possible fines that could be imposed by the Department of Transportation. DOT has said it is investigating the service problems at Southwest and members of Congress are calling on it to take firm action against the airline.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/southwest-meltdown-cost/index.html
Southwest Airlines ‘Breakly’ Hitchhiking’ Through the Holiday Misleadings: Managing a Company that’s Going Through the Mud with Frequent Flyer Points
The company did not give an estimate for how large the fourth quarter loss would be. The company earned $316 million in the third quarter, excluding special items, and $950 million on that basis over the first nine months of the year. It had been poised to return to profitability after $4.8 billion in combined losses 2020 and 2021 caused by the pandemic, ending a streak of 47 straight year of annual profits.
Some affected customers are still waiting to get their luggage back. Two weeks have passed since Southwest canceled Buckley’s flight to Chicago. And she still has no idea where her luggage is.
The airline is projected to sustain some serious losses because its stock plummeted immediately after the holiday mess and one passenger is suing Southwest after he claims it failed to adequately refunds him or his daughter. On Wednesday, the airline began offering 25,000 frequent-flyer points — worth more than $300 in flights — to passengers whose flights were cancelled, or significantly delayed, over the holidays.
Captain Tom Nekouei, the vice president of the Southwest pilots union, wrote in an email that Gary Kelly still reigns supreme on the board of this company despite having overseen the decisions and setting conditions that made this most recent fiasco possible. I am tired of seeing my company’s good name dragged through the mud in national media and of my fellow employees having their reputations dragged through the mud.
“In 2023 we will continue our work, from accountability for Southwest Airlines to further progress supporting all airline passengers through action on enforcement, rulemaking, and transparency,” Buttigieg, tweeted on Dec. 31.