Jan 02 2023

Southwest Airlines experienced an operational crisis greater than any in its history – and this is an airline that managed to operate a four aircraft schedule with just three planes, and developed the 10 minute turn – in order to survive.

It didn’t just cancel flights broadly across its system for the holidays, it kept doing it day after day, unable to recover effectively. That ruined the holidays for more and more people, compounding the issues – and hits to their business.

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Dec 30 2022

With the virtual shutdown of Southwest Airlines for a week, customers weren’t able to fly, and that means they weren’t able to take those last trips that would have earned their status for 2023 or taken advantage of their soon-to-expire companion passes. So Southwest is giving members one extra month to qualify for status and giving members with December 31, 2022-expiring companion passes an extra month (January 2023) to use those companion passes.

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Dec 28 2022

Southwest’s IT systems lag other airlines. Their phone systems can’t handle the load. And recovery from a situation where crew are out of place, where the airline doesn’t always even know where crew are, and where flight schedules and staffing have to be rebuilt manually is not only nearly impossible – it’s made harder by operational know-how with a hole in it coming out of the pandemic.

Add on that a lot of people were paid to retire early in 2020. Southwest hired about 16,000 people in 2022. Nearly 20% of their workforce is brand new this year. A lot of that is flight attendants, and other front line employees. But it’s ops people too.

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Dec 28 2022

Police threatened to arrest stranded Southwest Airlines passengers if they didn’t leave the gate area. In the video, the officer incorrectly claims that since their flight was cancelled they have no ticket and are therefore “trespassing.” “If your ticket was cancelled, you no longer have a ticket. You understand that, right?”

According to the officer, “Southwest is calling us” so they’re responding to the airline calling the police on their customers. I certainly feel for the overwhelmed employees, but that’s a bad look.

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Dec 28 2022

Southwest Airlines has faced an operational disaster of unprecedented proportions, cancelling over 60% of its flights every day and continuing to do so. They are likely displacing a quarter million passengers per day and doing so for about a week.

The Southwest Airlines CEO has broken his silence. There’s now a page on their website committing to reimburse passenger expenses. And there are hints at what really went wrong.

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Dec 27 2022

Southwest has cancelled an unprecedented number of flights over the holidays in a complete operational meltdown. They lacked the staff needed to handle disruptions that may have been triggered, in part, by weather. But mostly they lacked the systems to recover. And they’re cancelling two thirds of their flights. Every. Single. Day.

Things got so bad in Phoenix that the airline made an announcement saying everyone waiting in long lines for help? Yeah, don’t bother. Everyone should just go home.

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