Why Did Southwest Cancel Thousands Of Flights? Here’s What Happened.

Five days after severe winter weather wreaked havoc on holiday air travel throughout the United States, most main carriers are again up and working. Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines every canceled fewer than 40 flights on Wednesday, according to FlightAware, a flight monitoring service. Delta had the fewest with solely 15 cancellations.

At Southwest, it was a really totally different story.

More than 2,500 flights, or 62 p.c of its deliberate flights on Wednesday, had been canceled, in keeping with FlightAware. And Southwest mentioned in an announcement on Wednesday that it deliberate to fly one third of its scheduled flights for the subsequent a number of days because it tries to return to regular operations, that means it could proceed to cancel near 2,500 flights a day. Some passengers, unable to rebook Southwest flights, rented vehicles or spent a whole lot of {dollars} to purchase tickets on different airways.

So what brought on the meltdown?

The “point-to-point” mannequin failed

Southwest makes use of a “point-to-point” route mannequin that always lets passengers fly straight from smaller cities and areas with out having to cease at a central hub like Denver or New York. Point-to-point flights reduce journey occasions by eliminating the intermediate cease — sometimes an enormous benefit for vacationers who aren’t flying from main metro areas.

Other giant carriers like United and American depend on a “hub-and-spoke” mannequin during which planes sometimes fly from smaller cities to a hub airport the place passengers change planes.

For instance, a passenger flying on a United plane from Oklahoma City to Phoenix might should cease in Denver for a number of hours. Southwest flies routes directly from Oklahoma City to Phoenix in lower than three hours.

With a hub system, there’s a prepared pool of crew members and pilots who can report back to work at a serious airport, mentioned Mike Arnot, an business analyst. That makes it simpler to regroup after a storm, he mentioned. Planes are also stored nearer to their house airports, quite than being unfold throughout the nation.

It’s tougher to have a reserve of standby crew members and pilots when airways serve many smaller markets. There is just not normally extra crew in locations like Syracuse, N.Y., Mr. Arnot mentioned.

As a consequence, Southwest’s cancellations created a large snowball impact that rippled throughout its fastidiously choreographed community, leaving planes and crews scattered throughout the nation, he and different analysts mentioned.

“The only way to reset is to get the planes and crew back to where they should be,” Mr. Arnot mentioned. “And the only way to do that is to cancel a huge amount of flights.”

In a video message on Tuesday, Southwest’s chief government, Bob Jordan, likened the airline’s route mannequin to a “giant puzzle” that depends on airplanes and crews remaining in movement.

Because Southwest is the biggest airline in 23 of the highest 25 journey markets within the United States, when the extreme climate led to many canceled flights, it resulted in airplanes and crew members being out of place in dozens of cities, he mentioned.

The airline, he mentioned, was “focused on safely getting all the pieces back into position to end this rolling struggle.”

Tech issues additionally harm

Airline scheduling is a “very intricate system” that should take note of union guidelines, federal laws and airline insurance policies when assigning crews and pilots to flights, mentioned Kathleen Bangs, a former industrial airline pilot and spokeswoman for FlightAware.

Southwest’s system, nonetheless, couldn’t preserve monitor of the place its crew members and pilots have been after so many flights have been canceled, Mr. Arnot mentioned.

Pilots and crew members in search of their subsequent task waited hours — 9 hours in a single case — to talk to employees members at Southwest’s overwhelmed operations middle, mentioned Casey A. Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, the union that represents the virtually 10,000 Southwest pilots. With nowhere to go, a whole lot of pilots and crew members slept in airports subsequent to passengers and baggage, he mentioned.

“Once one card falls, the whole house falls here at Southwest,” he mentioned. “That’s our problem. We couldn’t keep up with the cascading events.”

Mr. Murray mentioned the union had been urging the airline for years to replace “I.T. and infrastructure from the 1990s.”

“We’re seeing these meltdowns occur with more severity and more frequency and this past weekend was the exclamation point,” he mentioned. The airline also suffered a technology meltdown in June 2021 that resulted in a day when half of its flights have been delayed and lots of have been canceled; it took days earlier than the scenario might be resolved. In October of that 12 months, it had comparable points and canceled more than 1,800 flights over one weekend.

Even earlier than this week’s issues, Mr. Jordan, Southwest’s chief government, had acknowledged that the scheduling system was outdated.

“We’re behind,” Mr. Jordan mentioned in November, in keeping with Fortune. “As we’ve grown, we’ve outrun our tools.”

For instance, Southwest doesn’t have a fast, automated technique to contact crew members who get reassigned, he mentioned. “Someone needs to call them or chase them down in the airport and tell them,” he mentioned.

Customers have been left with few choices

Unlike different main carriers, Southwest doesn’t have agreements with different airways that enable passengers to fly on rivals’ planes when there’s a cancellation or vital delay. “Most low-cost carriers do not have these agreements in place,” Mr. Arnot mentioned, largely as a result of these agreements are costly.

“If your flight is canceled, you are compensated,” he mentioned of Southwest passengers. Or passengers are rebooked on the subsequent obtainable flight with the identical airline.

For hundreds of Southwest passengers in the previous few days that was not a viable different.

Katie McNamara, an artwork director from Brooklyn, visited household in Mississippi for the vacation along with her husband, Justin, and their two kids, who’re 8 and a pair of.

They have been scheduled to fly again on Wednesday from New Orleans however when their flight was canceled, they might discover no different flights on Southwest’s web site till a minimum of Jan. 31.

They paid $1,500 for 4 one-way tickets to New York on JetBlue on Friday. Ms. McNamara mentioned she hoped Southwest will cowl the additional value however was ready to name customer support. (The airline directed clients to a website to rebook flights or request refunds.)

“I doubt they’re answering their phones at the moment,” she mentioned.

Southwest mentioned that “requests for reasonable reimbursements directly related to the travel disruption” could be reviewed on a case-by-case foundation.

Ms. McNamara, 37, who has used Southwest for years for direct flights to go to household in Texas, New Mexico and Mississippi, mentioned the present fiasco received’t preserve her from reserving with the airline once more.

But she mentioned she hopes Southwest will compensate her household in a roundabout way.

“Justin would probably be happy with some drink tickets,” she mentioned. Specifically, she mentioned, for an “adult beverage.”

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