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Southwest Airlines cancels thousands of flights after winter snowstorm
The winter storm that disrupted thousands of travel plans over the weekend has created an epic pile-on of flight cancellations for Southwest Airlines, leaving thousands of families stranded, with some waiting for days to fly back home. (www.cbsnews.com) More...
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SWA just became "like every other airline". There was a time when they were special, different, and cool. But now they are run by the exact same type of people they used to loathe. There is no turning back and the "good old days" are gone. Gud Luk
Mr. Enyart - I beg to differ...if Southwest was "was like every other airline" they would have completed the majority of their flights during this time frame. Sadly, they're much worse, at least in this case. Time for major changes to their infrastructure.
What is not addressed is that Delta, United, American, Alaska all started cancelling on Wednesday to reduce the load on their system. Southwest thought they could "keep all the balls in the air," but being a centralized U.S. operation they were forced to drop everything and start their system over.
I got stranded for 12 hours because of a weather-delayed flight on Southwest on Thursday last week. Sounds like I got off easy.
A Friend of mine was scheduled to leave Dallas for Orlando on Christmas day. Her flight was delayed for over eight hours. They finally put everyone on a plane, only then to announce that they were short a pilot and were "calling around" for one while everyone was now stuck on board.
She finally made it home about 13 hours after scheduled departure.
She finally made it home about 13 hours after scheduled departure.
What is a “centralized U.S. operation”? How and why would it make Southwest uniquely vulnerable to this cascade of cancellation chaos?
The majority of their fleet stops a couple times a day at airports in the path of the storm. They cannot easily use replacement aircraft as they are not hub and spoke. One aircraft will fly through several cities, not out to Nashville and back. They need a serious computer to do same day rescheduling if they have more than a few issues. There are lots of moving parts, aircraft, pilots, flight attendants, ground crew, and contracted airport access hours. The parts all move independently and most alight for the passenger flight to take place.
It did not help that Southwest Executives got very authoritian, mandating overtime for everyone or they get fired. I lot of employees, especially ground staff, walked off the job. While the majority ignored the mandate to report for unscheduled overtime with 12 hour or longer days.
This is squarely an Executive problem. The BOD should hold them accountable and give out walking papers.
They have known for years that their scheduling system cannot be recovered easily, as they are not hub and spoke. They have never been willing to invest in the raw computing power and software to dynamically recover their schedule. Second was the idea employees would accept the overtime or else approach they took. Rather than cancel future flights likes all their competitors. They thought they would keep most their schedule intact with the work overtime or else approach.
It did not help that Southwest Executives got very authoritian, mandating overtime for everyone or they get fired. I lot of employees, especially ground staff, walked off the job. While the majority ignored the mandate to report for unscheduled overtime with 12 hour or longer days.
This is squarely an Executive problem. The BOD should hold them accountable and give out walking papers.
They have known for years that their scheduling system cannot be recovered easily, as they are not hub and spoke. They have never been willing to invest in the raw computing power and software to dynamically recover their schedule. Second was the idea employees would accept the overtime or else approach they took. Rather than cancel future flights likes all their competitors. They thought they would keep most their schedule intact with the work overtime or else approach.
