Southwest Airlines flight 872 from Dallas Love Field to Kansas City Friday morning made an unscheduled stop in Wichita today in order to drop off a flight attendant. Passengers weren’t told this was happening until just before boarding.
A passenger on board shares that the “17-year veteran pilot apologize[d]” to everyone on board for the extra long trip and offered that the situation was a “first for him too.”
According to Southwest, they “had to fill a one-person staffing hole in ICT to make sure an originator there was able to go. We avoided a big delay on that one by doing so.” In other words they didn’t have enough flight attendants to operate a flight that was originating in Wichita on Friday.
- If they cancelled that flight, they’d have also cancelled downline segments operated by the same plane.
- I believe Southwest’s earliest scheduled arrival into Wichita is at noon. Flying a crewmember on that scheduled St. Louis flight would have meant an hours-longer delay.
Flight WN872 ultimately arrived in Kansas City just 46 minutes late.
Southwest made the right call. Much better that one flight takes a small delay rather than other flights get majorly delayed or cancelled.
As a frequent Southwest flyer, I appreciate this.
Slow news day huh?
That’s quite a consumer-unfriendly decision by Southwest: Doing the math, if this cause a 46 minute delay at MCI, that suggests that without the Wichita stop they would have landed at 08:45 am. According to Google Maps, it’s a 3 hour drive from MCI to ICT, so they could have taken an Uber (or company vehicle) and made it in time. In addition, given that aircraft lifetime is driven in part by Compression/Decompression cycles, one wonders if it was worth it to them ?
It seems like a lot of expense to reposition a flight attendant. Why not an early morning flight for the flight attendant and a driver for the rest of the way?
I’d be pretty annoyed about this. Why not send the FA on another airline?
Well they are obviously sensitive to the perception that their operations logistics are undependable after the catastrophe a few months back. Perhaps better to have one 46-minute late landing than to mess up several flights throughout the day. Do we get the impression that at least they’re trying hard to operate their schedule, or that they still have problems figuring it out?
No FA is worth me wasting 46 minutes of my life. Like someone else posted, send the FA on another airline or charter a flight if the FA is so important. Or put them in a car for the 5 hour drive from Dallas to Wichita (I’m sure SW knew in advance this was happening). Why should the customers, in this case an entire plane load, always pay the price for airline screwups? Never mind. I know the answer. Because airlines face no true repercussions for their actions. They’ll just get bailed out with customer (taxpayer) money when things get bad, which they will again.
Could have easily chartered a light aircraft to fly the FA to MCI. Why require an airliner full of passengers to drop them off? Seems like a foolish decision.
Babblespeak says “No FA is worth me wasting 46 minutes of my life.” In a catastrophic event, that flight attendant may be the one that will be there to save his/her butt. So yes, it *IS* worth that small delay.
@Babblespeak:
“No FA is worth me wasting 46 minutes of my life.”
You’re not as important as you obviously think you are.
“Time to spare? Go by air.”
Better to not fly Southwest, I don’t like their boarding policy anyways and since I’m getting close to a million miles on United might as well stick with them for the next million for better seat selection and boarding policy.
Does that qualify for extra segments?
Ridiculous. SW delayed a plane load (~150) of people by 46 minutes, likely many missed connections. I
@Tom
I know my CBA specifically precludes what you suggest (at least piston engine twin aircraft)…. Perhaps the same is true as SWA. Ever thought of that? Probably not!
I had a 2 1/2 hour delay Monday night on Delta in Atlanta. Initially they blamed mechanical but finally the pilot admitted they were waiting on him since ours was a short hop and he would time out sooner. They took our pilot for a longer flight.
I was on this plane. They did tell us about 5 minutes before we boarded what the plan was. But the “5 minutes on the ground” and “we won’t even need fuel” in Wichita turned into 30+ minutes and “now we need fuel” at which point I admit I got a wee bit annoyed. The crew provided the usual pleasant Southwest treatment though. They even tried to squeeze in a second drink service between ICT and MCI, which was a trick since we were only at cruising altitude for 15 mins.
rjb,
So delay 150 people by 46 minutes where a few might miss their connection, Or delay 150 people several hours as they drive the FA up ensuring ALL connections would be missed. You don’t need to be an airline operations guru to see you are not the brightest of bulbs!
Well, poor planning on SWA’s part inconvenienced a couple hundred customers. I hope the scheduler was scheduled for more training!
@Revis,
Scheduler? What Crew Scheduling? Probably some poor FA probably woke up at his/her ICT hotel that morning sick as a dog, called crew scheduling, they huddled with Dispatch, assigned a reserve FA to the MCI flight and added a “tech stop” to drop them off… unfortunately “the plan” didn’t work as slick as they thought and incurred an unexpected (an unexceptional) 46 min delay. If you were on the outbound ICT flight that was short 1 FA you would’ve no doubt demanded and expected no less…. No retraining needed!
Sad part is that you know somebody knew about the need long before some action was ultimately taken (unless the FA got into a car accident enroute to ICT)
I once tried to take a JetBlue redeye at 11pm SJC to JFK. All day I watched the fall further and further behind schedule up and down the east coast. It finally left JFK for SJC 3 hours late and the SJC departure had ultimately been pushed to 2:30 AM. THREE hours into the positioning flight, it finally cancelled at 11:30PM. Nobody did the math before then to determine it was not going to fly???
Smartly, I kept the rental car and watched this unfold from an airport hotel parking lot.
People think they’re way more important than they really are. It was 46 minutes out of your life to drop off a person who might just save your meaningless life one day.
@Steven
FA’s never get sick at the outstation on the overnight? That’s the most probable scenario, why would you even think he/she would be driving to ICT, that’s not a base, they would be coming from a hotel…. a mid pairing sick call is most likely the culprit.
Something everyone commenting here seems to have missed. Southwest doesn’t serve Wichita (ITC). The story about a flight attendant needed for a departing flight from there doesn’t make any sense.
@Southwest Fan – Southwest serves St. Louis and Denver from Wichita. Look it up!
Did it say where flight originated? If no, ICT/MCI maths r meaningless. MCI isn’t a hub so traffic is O&D and as much chance of missed connection. Good call.
Intentional delay wholly in the airlines control. Compensation is due to all on the flight.
A couple of rude comments about what happened. Wow, I guess the world has to be perfect for some people. Life happens. I just flew a couple of days ago and the flight was held up for 50 minutes because of a piece of emergency medical equipment that was being sent was late. I LOVE take offs and landings so the extra stop would have been a blast. Besides the fact that that extra stop cost those passengers nothing since it was an end flight not a connecting one. Some people need to grow up and quit whinging and crying..
When I worked at a school District we would always have a few extra substitute teachers come in everyday that were unassigned so we could send them to a school if there was a sudden illness or other emergency. I’m wondering if the Airlines keeps a few spare flight crews in certain zones so they can be sent to cover a sudden issue.
It used to be called a Flag Stop. I remember more than a few back in the days of Piedmont Airlines. They would tell you up front when you checked in at the counter. Usually it was because another flight had cancelled or they were positioning crew.
MCI is a pretty significant transfer hub, I’ve there connected many times. However, coming from DAL, it unlikely many had connections due to the multitude of non stops from DAL.
46 minutes late would probably still make connections although middle seats and no bags was the likely result (been there too).
Statistically, somebody got screwed.
Flag stops originated with the early railroads to stop the train only when needed. You can see this on Petticoat Junction reruns.
Boy, have times changed!! Years ago when I was flying for Piedmont, there were a couple of times when we flag stopped to pick up passangers from a cancelled flight. WE also flag stopped to drop paxs off………Maybe instead of criticising everything that happens, you say thank you!! Frankly, dropping off a crew member to protect one flight, ends up protecting the whole operation. During a trip many years ago, I ended up in the ER in IND and the company had to replace me, and it was in the middle of the night. They had to replace me to operate the flight, unfortunatly I am not sure how that happened……I was in the hospital for 3 days. Glad to know that there are still some good decision makers out there, thinking of the bigger picture.
Whenever I have a delay in my daily routine, I consider it a God thing. Who knows if that 46 minute delay deterred someone from an accident. Learn how to be considerate of others. How would you have wanted it to be handled if you were the FA or if the FA was your wife, daughter or one of your grandchildren.
There is so much to be grateful for, you took off and landed safely each time. That is such a huge blessing!
Love and blessings to everyone that complained and certainly to those that showed compassion!
Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview; your comment will be visible after it has been approved.
Whenever I have a delay in my daily routine, I consider it a God thing. Who knows if that 46 minutes delay deterred someone from an accident. Learn how to be considerate of others. How would you have wanted it to be handled if you were the FA or if the FA was your wife, daughter or one of your grandchildren? There is so much to be grateful for, you took off and landed safely each time. That is such a huge blessing! Love and blessings to everyone that complained and certainly to those that showed compassion!
Did taking off and landing stop being the most hazardous part of a flight? Besides, if I am going to be roped in for an airline’s work, I want to be paid, not pay them.
@Howard
Of course, but they are called “reserves” and are typically only at bases ( which ICT is not), so they used this flight to MCI to drop off a reservist in ICT to staff the outbound flight out of there, the turnaround time in ICT just took a bit longer than expected…..doesn’t prevent the pearl clutching outrage mob that crops up when Gary has a slow news day (he knows this is not news considering every day there are 100s of delays over many hours for much more interesting reasons than this!)
To me this signifies how big the staffing issues really are on southwest. The fact that no other flight attendant was available shows me that everyone is leaving the airline because they are not happy. That’s a problem. And, the fact that the pilot did not know in advance & forced an entire plane full of paying customers to make this stop and risk making their connections (which aren’t talked about) is a problem. Did passenger make their connections? I recently few southwest. The day started out delayed. I missed my connection, then got rerouted which included an additional flight. Every single flight that day was delayed. I started the day with my first flight leaving at 8am & suppose to arrive on a second at 1pm to my final destination. After being rerouted & delayed I didn’t land until 11pm. Ridiculous. And every single flight I was on had customers who were being rerouted. Southwest has some serious problems. I recently saw a southwest flight attendant in uniform get off a united airlines flight & thought that was weird. Apparently they are killing their staff because they just don’t have enough people to work.
What evidence is there that they didn’t hold most if not all of the connections?
@ J Edwards,
It’s not strange that they didn’t have an extra FA at an outstation, ICT is not a base, why would you expect there to be a spare FA hanging around there? As far as you thinking it “weird” to see a SW FA getting off a UA flight..that’s normal, that’s how all of us get to work. I fly for JetBlue but I commuted on Delta this week, last week I used Spirit. You must be very unfamiliar with the airline industry if this needs to be explained to you.
Life is short people. Enjoy the ride and relax!
More then likely a flight attendant called out sick for there pairing. And since the flight was an originator scheduling pulled some strings to minimize the operations from going into a tail spin with cancellations and severe delays for our outbound passengers.
Bad idea. All involved will be called into Dallas for “de-briefing” by VP Operations.
@Babbkespeak
I’m pretty sure the next thing you were going to say is, I want to speak with a manager! And your real name is probably Kevin!
@One Trippe
No one will be called in for a 46 min delay incurred to prevent a multi hour delay.
A few thoughts based on the replies:
1. I doubt many have connections in under 46 minutes on SWA which isnt a hub designed airline. If they did, maybe Southwest was able to hold those flights for a few extra minutes.
2. You are flying a discount airline. Some patience is helpful
3. I am guessing SWA is going to owe some landing fee money and burned a few thousand dollars worth of extra fuel. SWA would have found other options if they were available.
As usual people defend SWA as if it can do no wrong, but this is news. Dallas-MCI is an important business route where much business travel still happens. While it’s never ideal to land on the day of meetings, etc, this is not always preventable, and the flying time to MCI is basically an hour wheels up to wheels down. The logical thing to do, rather than mess up the schedule of well over 150 pax on a 737 would have been to send the lone FA by Uber to DFW to fly on AA to ICT, which had a flight leaving at almost exactly the same time at the SWA flight, and another one leaving 90 minutes later.
SWA is still a budget airline that cuts corners and costs. I fly AA from DFW to MCI on a regular basis, sometimes with same day turnarounds and sometimes with overnight turnarounds, and very often with some of the same pax, because is is a business route and people on that route are on tight schedules. So no, this was a lousy call to make on a route like this on the morning of a business day. The fact that SWA leaders couldn’t figure out the simple solution that would have solved both problems is almost mind-boggling. Then again, they might have needed a functional computer system to find out that there was a scheduled flight to ICT they could put one FA on instead of basically doubling the flying time of everyone on board.
Ah, I miss the old days of Golden Global Intercontinental Odyssey World Airlines, you know the Airport movies airline? They always had Learjets or Falcon Jets at every airport that they flew to and from in order to transport their personnel wherever they needed to go.
Did you know that FedEx and UPS pay private charters for packages that don’t make the original company flight to catch up to the sorting facilities. This is of course very expensive and a much more concentrated sorting operation. Southwest has more pilot and flight attendant bases than any other US airline. I am a WN flight attendant. When COVID hit a few years ago now. The company response was to stretch the operation. This created more cities and few flights per city. Unfortunately, this and many other glitches pop up and this must have been that operational shifts solution. Looking back we can all have better ideas. I just want to point out that this is all part of the operational adjustments from the pandemic and is being improved. We have very full flights as we finish the summer travel season. So this would impact more people. The Network Work Operational Control Center has many thousands of flights to monitor and the communication chain is not as simple as we may all think it could or should be. Keep traveling it will keep getting better.
This is more normal than people think. Southwest does this a lot. I can say they have serious issues with crew scheduling and staffing problems.
What they do is lie to everyone about the situation by pretending it just happened. Then after everyone is boarded they have this amazing problem that just happened.
I worked for a much larger airline than Southwest and did the job of crew scheduling. You know well in advance when you’re short crew and there’s alerts to tell you 24 hours before departure if you have a crew shortage.
Having worked with Southwest directly, they lie to customers and employees. It’s not an ethical or good airline. You truly get what you pay for flying is airline.
Man the Crying Ass folks on here complaining bout going out the way 46 min. And the ones talking bout driving, you get your butt in a car and drive that far. Some crying ass folks on here, Goodness if the shoe was on the other foot you would be doing the same thing for a coworker.
Southwest Airlines should have respect for Elderly passengers
I was forced to cancel my trip for my granddaughter and I. Due to my unexpected illness. SW would not give me a refund! The said I had the option to travel at another time.The amount of the fares are keep and I could use them at another time. I felt they should have refunded my money because I live on a fixed income and need the money for my medical unexpected expenses
I feel that is ELDERLY ABUSE. AT my age and medical issues God knows if I ever use the money they kept. They said I could use it at any time but am at a young women
Shame on Southwest They should have refunded money