After a winter storm ravaged many parts of the country, most airlines quickly recovered from delays and cancellations. But not Southwest Airlines, which days later is still struggling with what executives and analysts describe as the biggest operational collapse in its five-decade history.
The bad weather a few days before Christmas hit the airline harder than the rest of the industry due to inadequate computer systems that made it difficult for the airline to get crews to waiting planes and passengers on alternate flights, and a flight model that caused problems could blow over from one airport to another.
“This is the worst round of cancellations for a single airline I can recall in a career spanning more than 20 years as an industry analyst,” said Henry Harteveldt, who covers airlines for Atmosphere Research Group.
Thousands of travelers were stranded in airports, and many said Southwest had done little or nothing to get them to their destination. Southwest canceled more than 2,900 flights on Monday; scrapped about 2,500 a day over the next two days, more than 60 percent off schedule; and said it could take days to fully restore normal operation.
Fabian Maldonado, a Los Angeles construction manager who described himself as a loyal Southwest customer, said he and his two sons flew on a Southwest flight from Burbank, California, to Sacramento on Monday, planning to fly from there to Spokane, Washington. to fly. But the flight to Spokane was canceled and Southwest did not notify him, he said.
“This really makes me think about them,” Mr. Maldonado said. “The customer service is non-existent; it falls apart.”
In a video statement Tuesday night, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan apologized to customers. He said the airline had failed to get flight crews where they needed to be, exacerbating the effects of the bad weather, and that solving the “giant puzzle” could take days.
“Our plan for the next few days is to fly on a shortened schedule and move our people and aircraft,” Jordan said. “We are making progress and we are optimistic to be back on track before next week.”
The Ministry of Transport said in a statement Monday that it would investigate the problems at Southwest, adding it was concerned about the airline’s “unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays” and reports of poor customer service. On Tuesday, President Biden reposted that statement on Twitter, urging customers to check their eligibility for compensation.
All airlines have come under fire from lawmakers and regulators for delays and cancellations since travel demand recovered from the pandemic in 2021. Many of the industry’s problems can be traced back to staff shortages caused in part by early retirements and buyouts that the sector offered workers after ticket sales collapsed in 2020.
Lyn Montgomery, the president of Transport Workers Union Local 556, which represents Southwest Airlines flight attendants, said she spoke with Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, on Tuesday to discuss the outage in Southwest. She said Southwest’s technology was a major driver of the collapse and that her union had long been pressuring the company’s leaders to improve it.
“We’re going to make sure we hold Southwest Airlines executives accountable for what’s happening so that the airline we’ve helped make successful becomes reliable and stable again,” Ms. Montgomery said in an interview.
Mr Buttigieg said in a statement on Tuesday that he had also spoken with Southwest CEO Mr Jordan.
In an interview on Tuesday with NBC Nightly News, Mr. Buttigieg said, “Where most airlines have started to improve their performance, Southwest has actually gone the other way,” adding, “It’s an unacceptable situation.”
Southwest was the first major airline to turn a profit as the pandemic began to subside. And in some ways it emerged as a big winner as people started flying again and taking vacations.
But analysts say problems were lurking in Southwest’s business — problems that appear to have stumbled the company when the bad weather set in late last week.
The storm, aviation experts said, disproportionately impacted Southwest because the company configures its network differently than the country’s three other major airlines — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines — have set up theirs.
Most airlines operate on a “hub and speak” basis, with planes returning to a hub airport after flying to other cities – for example, United has hubs at the airports serving Newark, Houston and Denver. While Southwest has a large presence at certain airports, it uses a “point-to-point” approach where planes tend to fly from destination to destination without returning to one or two main hubs.
Hub-and-spoke airlines can shut down specific routes if the weather turns bad, and with proper planning, the companies can have crews and aircraft to resume operations if conditions improve. But Southwest can’t do that so easily without disrupting multiple flights and routes, Mr. Harteveldt said.
David Vernon, an aviation analyst at Bernstein Research, said Southwest’s approach allows the company to make greater use of its planes during normal times, but if something goes wrong, the problems could spread quickly.
Of course, hub-and-spoke airlines can and have experienced major problems, especially when inclement weather or other issues cripple operations at one or more major hub airports.
Southwest, which has long prided itself on having good relations with its employees, has also recently been battling staff shortages that most likely have increased tensions between management and employees, said Robert W. Mann Jr., a former executive of a airline who now runs the consultancy. firm RW Mann & Company.
“Southwest clearly took the worst of this,” said Mr. Mann. “I have to think it was cultural more than anything else.”
The turmoil is a test for Mr. Jordan, a former Southwest official who took over as CEO in February. The company’s share price closed about 6 percent lower on Tuesday.
Union leaders said a root cause of Southwest’s problems were inadequate computer systems that they said had failed to efficiently match crews to flights as cancellations began to pile up. “They promised us they would spend time and money on the infrastructure, but it hasn’t been enough,” said Ms Montgomery, the union leader. “The house of cards has fallen.”
Analysts also said Southwest had been slow to introduce new systems that would help run the company. “Southwest has never considered technology a strategic priority” Mr. said Harteveldt.
This and other failures are expected to draw the attention of officials in Washington, where lawmakers such as Sen. Maria Cantwell, who heads the Commerce Committee, called on Tuesday for stronger protections for travelers, including federal rules requiring airlines to issue refunds for delayed or canceled flights. . to flee.
To make matters worse for customers, Southwest has a policy of not exchanging tickets with other airlines, so the company was unable to rebook passengers on other flights, Mr Harteveldt said. The debacle could force the airline to buy back frustrated customers with bigger discounts or run more promotions, he said.
No region or airport was hardest hit by the cancellations, although airports with a large presence in the Southwest were hardest hit. Those airports were Denver International, Chicago Midway, Harry Reid International in Las Vegas, and Sacramento International.
It’s been almost a week since the winter storm wreaked havoc on millions of travelers. The number of canceled flights began to climb on Thursday, as airlines canceled more than 2,600. The next day, nearly 6,000, or about a quarter of all U.S. flights, were canceled nationwide. On Saturday, Christmas Eve, nearly 3,500 flights were canceled and slightly fewer, about 3,200, were cut from the Christmas Day schedule.
Reporting contributed by Derrick Bryson Taylor, Daniel Victor, Shawn Hubler, Mark Walker and Steve Lohr.
