A staffing shortage may have led to Southwest’s holiday travel debacle that saw over 70% of flights canceled on Monday, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Southwest saw an unusually high number of employee absences and declared a “state of operational emergency” at the Denver Airport, according to a December 21 message to ramp workers seen by Bloomberg News.
The company is still working to get back to normal operations, with 60% of its Wednesday flight schedule and 58% of its trips for Thursday canceled, according to FlightAware.
Southwest CEO Bob Jordan apologized in a Tuesday video, saying the company reduced its schedule to reposition aircraft and crews.
“We’re optimistic to be back on track before next week,” Jordan said.
Analysts at Citigroup estimate the carrier’s response to the storm that engulfed much of the country could have a 5% drag on Southwest’s fourth-quarter profits.
Bloomberg News was able to obtain management messages to Southwest employees, which the outlet said highlighted how the airline struggled as the “systems used to coordinate a vast network of airplanes, destinations, and flight crews were first overwhelmed and then failed to recover.”
Jordan said, “Part of what we’re suffering is a lack of tools.” He also noted that the company’s scheduling system is an area in need of investment.
“We need to be able to produce solutions faster, and we need to be able to communicate with each other where it doesn’t involve a phone call,” Jordan added.
The Department of Transportation is investigating “whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan,” the department tweeted on December 26.
Bloomberg’s report suggests Southwest was well aware of issues ahead of Christmas.
On December 21, severe weather was already disrupting Southwest’s operations in Denver, limiting the number of flights the airline could handle safely, Chief Operating Official Andrew Watterson reportedly said in an internal message.
Southwest also suspended operations at Chicago’s Midway International Airport, meaning both locations would have fewer flights shuttling crews between their home bases and assignments, Watterson said.
On December 23, 90% of Southwest’s routes were affected by weather, but Watterson said the company had taken steps to position itself for fewer cancellations on Christmas Eve.
“As long as there’s not another disruption, we’ll start the day in a much better position,” Watterson claimed.
That did not happen, as the airline faced weather disruptions and a refueling glitch. Southwest’s base at Dallas Love Field was loaded with parked aircraft to ease congestion at northern airports overwhelmed by frigid temperatures.
This left Southwest “no choice but to implement additional cancellations,” Watterson said.
Southwest CEO Jordan spoke with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who said the mishap was more than just a weather event.
“This has clearly crossed the line from what’s an uncontrollable weather situation to something that is the airline’s direct responsibility,” Buttigieg argued on NBC Nightly News.
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell affirmed Buttigieg’s position.
“The problems at Southwest Airlines over the last several days go beyond weather,” Cantwell said in a statement. “The committee will be looking into the causes of these disruptions and its impact to consumers.”
Cantwell also said consumers need more robust protections, including an updated consumer refund rule.
Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut posited the airlines should compensate customers for their tickets and spoiled holiday plans.
This is the same old story with Southwest. A crap airline with crappy IT infrastructure, which management thinks their frontline employees should make up for by working longer and harder. This is why I stopped flying them more than 5 years ago.
I can understand how weather can have an effect on travel but the other airlines didn’t have as many cancellations or delays. Southwest runs Love Field since hardly any other airline is allowed to fly out of there and don’t think anything about delays or cancellations. I quit flying them years ago when their prices went through the roof. There is no competition so they can charge what they want. Their pilots and flight attendants are so friendly. It’s a shame that the management could care less.
This is bullcrap! See the following for the real issue. The pilot should have an MBA. Why organizations fail analysis.
Voices From The Line: Larry Lonero
What happened to Southwest Airlines?
I’ve been a pilot for Southwest Airlines for over 35 years. I’ve given my heart and soul to Southwest Airlines during those years. And quite honestly Southwest Airlines has given its heart and soul to me and my family.
Many of you have asked what caused this epic meltdown. Unfortunately, the frontline employees have been watching this meltdown coming like a slow motion train wreck for sometime. And we’ve been begging our leadership to make much needed changes in order to avoid it. What happened yesterday started two decades ago.
Herb Kelleher was the brilliant CEO of SWA until 2004. He was a very operationally oriented leader. Herb spent lots of time on the front line. He always had his pulse on the day to day operation and the people who ran it. That philosophy flowed down through the ranks of leadership to the front line managers. We were a tight operation from top to bottom. We had tools, leadership and employee buy in. Everything that was needed to run a first class operation. When Herb retired in 2004 Gary Kelly became the new CEO.
Gary was an accountant by education and his style leading Southwest Airlines became more focused on finances and less on operations. He did not spend much time on the front lines. He didn’t engage front line employees much. When the CEO doesn’t get out in the trenches the neither do the lower levels of leadership.
Gary named another accountant to be Chief Operating Officer (the person responsible for day to day operations). The new COO had little or no operational background. This trickled down through the lower levels of leadership, as well.
They all disengaged the operation, disengaged the employees and focused more on Return on Investment, stock buybacks and Wall Street. This approach worked for Gary’s first 8 years because we were still riding the strong wave that Herb had built.
But as time went on the operation began to deteriorate. There was little investment in upgrading technology (after all, how do you measure the return on investing in infrastructure?) or the tools we needed to operate efficiently and consistently. As the frontline employees began to see the deterioration in our operation we began to warn our leadership. We educated them, we informed them and we made suggestions to them. But to no avail. The focus was on finances not operations. As we saw more and more deterioration in our operation our asks turned to pleas. Our pleas turned to dire warnings. But they went unheeded. After all, the stock price was up so what could be wrong?
We were a motivated, willing and proud employee group wanting to serve our customers and uphold the tradition of our beloved airline, the airline we built and the airline that the traveling public grew to cheer for and luv. But we were watching in frustration and disbelief as our once amazing airline was becoming a house of cards.
A half dozen small scale meltdowns occurred during the mid to late 2010’s. With each mini meltdown Leadership continued to ignore the pleas and warnings of the employees in the trenches. We were still operating with 1990’s technology. We didn’t have the tools we needed on the line to operate the sophisticated and large airline we had become. We could see that the wheels were about ready to fall off the bus. But no one in leadership would heed our pleas.
When COVID happened SWA scaled back considerably (as did all of the airlines) for about two years. This helped conceal the serious problems in technology, infrastructure and staffing that were occurring and being ignored. But as we ramped back up the lack of attention to the operation was waiting to show its ugly head.
Gary Kelly retired as CEO in early 2022. Bob Jordan was named CEO. He was a more operationally oriented leader. He replaced our Chief Operating Officer with a very smart man and they announced their priority would be to upgrade our airline’s technology and provide the frontline employees the operational tools we needed to care for our customers and employees. Finally, someone acknowledged the elephant in the room.
But two decades of neglect takes several years to overcome. And, unfortunately to our horror, our house of cards came tumbling down this week as a routine winter storm broke our 1990’s operating system.
The frontline employees were ready and on station. We were properly staffed. We were at the airports. Hell, we were ON the airplanes. But our antiquated software systems failed coupled with a decades old system of having to manage 20,000 frontline employees by phone calls. No automation had been developed to run this sophisticated machine.
We had a routine winter storm across the Midwest last Thursday. A larger than normal number flights were cancelled as a result. But what should have been one minor inconvenient day of travel turned into this nightmare. After all, American, United, Delta and the other airlines operated with only minor flight disruptions.
The two decades of neglect by SWA leadership caused the airline to lose track of all its crews. ALL of us. We were there. With our customers. At the jet. Ready to go. But there was no way to assign us. To confirm us. To release us to fly the flight. And we watched as our customers got stranded without their luggage missing their Christmas holiday.
I believe that our new CEO Bob Jordan inherited a MESS. This meltdown was not his failure but the failure of those before him. I believe he has the right priorities. But it will take time to right this ship. A few years at a minimum. Old leaders need to be replaced. Operationally oriented managers need to be brought in. I hope and pray Bob can execute on his promises to fix our once proud airline. Time will tell.
It’s been a punch in the gut for us frontline employees. We care for the traveling public. We have spent our entire careers serving you. Safely. Efficiently. With luv and pride. We are horrified. We are sorry. We are sorry for the chaos, inconvenience and frustration our airline caused you. We are angry. We are embarrassed. We are sad. Like you, the traveling public, we have been let down by our own leaders.
Herb once said the the biggest threat to Southwest Airlines will come from within. Not from other airlines. What a visionary he was. I miss Herb now more than ever.
#SWAPA #SouthwestAirlines
Thank you for sharing this. I had been wondering what actually happened behind the scenes. This is a logical explanation for how a large company could experience such a huge disconnect. And that they had been made aware of repeatedly. I guess the bigger they are, the harder they fall applies here. It’s just sad it was at the expense of so many people (and crew) to have such a major holiday disrupted or even ruined – for something that could have in some ways been prevented. I favored SWA, but will think twice until they get things in order.
It goes back to the beginning. When they built the monthly schedules for the pilots, common sense would dictate that you are going to have delays in the northeast due to the winter weather. This was not taken into account; therefore, the pilots became illegal having to wait for clearance and being in line for their aircraft to be de-iced. Bottom line – the department that builds those schedules for the pilots need to include lighter total flight days when they fly into the northeast. It was not the IT departments problem.
It’s a shame that someone cannot give an accurate information comment on the Southwest article that knows what goes on behind the scenes at Southwest.
Sounds like SWA needs to focus on everyday customer operations and up to date scheduling process related to all departments in making a successful operation like it had for over two decades!! ROI is exceedingly important but, so are other procedures to ensure every procedure is state of the art world class!!