Southwest Airlines executives apologized for the company’s holiday meltdown in a Senate hearing on Thursday.
“I want to sincerely and humbly apologize to those impacted by the disruption, which caused a tremendous amount of anguish, inconvenience and missed opportunities for our customers and employees,” Andrew Watterson, Southwest’s COO, said in front of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, per NBC News.
Southwest’s flights were claimed to be disrupted by frigid weather. However, its competitor’s cancellations were a fraction of the 16,700 flights the company had to cancel in late December.
Watterson told lawmakers the company is taking steps to prevent a similar event from subsequently happening, including updating scheduling software, which he said will go into effect on Friday, NBC News reported. The company is also undergoing an assessment to tackle icing issues at cold-weather airports.
Lawmakers urged Southwest to make changes to its policies following the mishap.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) questioned Southwest’s frequent-flier points compensation and said the company should have offered cash payments to those affected by the cancellation. Southwest offered points that Watterson said were worth roughly $300 towards future flights.
“The point system that you want to use is only going to be useless,” Markey said, according to NBC News. “It’s nothing but an empty gesture.”
Markey also said Southwest should pay for customers’ flights if they choose to fly on different airlines, but Watterson pushed back on both ideas.
“If they choose to fly somebody else, that is certainly their choice,” he said, per NBC News. “We will not pay them cash to pay to another airline unless it’s for reimbursement of a flight they took in the disruption.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) asked Watterson if Southwest had returned all luggage to passengers from disrupted flights.
Watterson said the airline returned “every single bag,” except 200 that did not have identifying information, according to USA Today.
Southwest’s point-to-point system, where planes fly consecutive routes instead of using hubs like many of its competitors, came under scrutiny. The point-to-point approach leads to a greater risk of disruption, creating a snowball effect when flights cannot reach their destination, according to NBC News.
The president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, Captain Casey A. Murray, also testified that the airline did not adequately prepare for the winter storm. He claimed that executives “allowed the airline to drift away from an employee-centered culture,” per NBC News.
Watterson pushed back on these claims, saying Southwest recently reinstated its quarterly dividend after providing “top industry wages” for employees, aircraft purchases, IT spending, and debt repayments, per NBC News.
The hearing also exposed the different views on the role government should play in regulating commercial airlines and their affordability, said NBC News. On average, airfares in December 2022 were 28% higher year-over-year, according to NerdWallet.
“Some Democrats on this committee were proposing the government step in with overly complex, anticompetitive and frankly unnecessary regulations that would collectively have the result of making flying unaffordable for many Americans,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was criticized by Democrats, who argued that he has not been hard on airlines that overbook, failing to fine them for delays and cancellations, according to The Hill.
Paul Hudson, president of Flyers Rights, a passenger advocacy group, said the airline industry was an oligopoly, with four major airlines controlling most of the flights, according to NBC News.
Clifford Winston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argued that privatizing U.S. airports in major cities could make room for more international carriers to serve domestic travel and ease congestion, NBC News reported.
“If you want to reduce the likelihood of mistakes, and you want people to be able to correct their mistakes, they need to be held accountable,” Winston said, per NBC News. “More competition will enable that to happen.”