Southwest flight cancellations meltdown may not be the last for any airline, experts say
back on track for now, but it may only be a matter of time before another airline – and its travelers – experience similar chaos. The airline canceled more than 15,000 flights between Dec. 22 and Dec. 29, according to FlightAware, which tracks air traffic in real time.
“We’ve watched this happen across the industry over the summer, two summers now, where it isn’t the storm that Mother Nature delivers that creates the havoc, it’s the storm of management teams not being able to deal with the recovery after the storm,” said Dennis Tajer, a longtime American Airlines pilot and spokesperson for their pilots union, Allied Pilots Association.
Southwest has blamed overstretched technology for its inability to bounce back from extreme winter weather over the holidays, but employees say that’s not the only problem and industry experts say Southwest isn’t alone.
USA TODAY reached out to Southwest for comment on specific criticisms and was redirected to the airline’s existing recovery effort statements.
‘They had beaten me down’:How Southwest’s mass flight cancellations forced passengers to improvise
‘There’s nothing we can do’: Southwest woes leave thousands of bags lost and left in piles at airports
Why is Southwest Airlines having so many problems?
“The issue isn’t staffing whatsoever,” Lyn Montgomery, president of Southwest’s flight attendants union TWU Local 556, which represents over 13,000 flight attendants, told USA TODAY. “It is actually the failure of upper executive management to ensure its IT infrastructure can take on the growth and expansion we’ve taken over the years,”
Southwest said it was “fully staffed and prepared” heading into the holiday weekend, but severe weather across the country displaced much of its fleet and crews and stretched scheduling tools to capacity.
“Our network is highly complex and the operation of the airline counts on all the pieces, especially aircraft and crews remaining in motion to where they’re planned to go,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in a video Tuesday, in which he also apologized.
Raising red flags
Southwest flight attendants and pilots say they’ve been flagging issues for years.
“For more than a decade, leadership shortcomings in adapting, innovating, and safeguarding our operations have led to repeated system disruptions, countless disappointed passengers, and millions in lost profits,” Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said in a statement. “…this problem began many years ago when the complexity of our network outgrew its ability to withstand meteorological and technological disruptions.”
Mann agreed that the Southwest’s speedy growth, especially as it ramped up services when travel picked up again in 2021. The airline is the nation’s largest carrier in terms of daily flights and domestic passengers.
“When they have a problem, they have a bigger problem,” he said.
Montgomery pointed out how Southwest expanded its international flights and has destination language-speaking staff, “yet the technology hasn’t really kept up” with that growth.
“This (meltdown) isn’t new but it’s certainly the most catastrophic of this nature that we’ve seen,” she said, adding that “‘micro-meltdowns’ happen in between.”
As far back as 2016, she said flight attendants have been waiting for policy changes. That year, a brownout internally dubbed Technado left crews stranded for days after a faulty router caused a 12-hour-long system outage.
In 2018, TWU Local 556 told executive management that “flight attendants were very, very tired and we were struggling to get the basics,” such as a meal or getting into hotel rooms in a timely manner, according to Montgomery. “These are things that have made our job really difficult,” she said.
The airline said Thursday, “We have much work ahead of us, including investing in new solutions to manage wide-scale disruptions.”
Unfortunately, those changes won’t happen overnight, according to Mann. “This will probably take a year or two to resolve from a systems standpoint,” he said.
Investing in human capital
Randy Barnes, president of TWU Local 555, which represents Southwest ground workers, says the company needs to invest in its employees, too.
“Ground workers need more support. Many of our people have been forced to work 16-hour or 18-hour days during this holiday season,” the union leader said in a statement, noting that some workers got frostbite this past week. “Although it can be complicated, especially during the holiday season, we need to consider better spacing of flights during extreme weather events in the bitter cold of winter – as well as the extreme heat of summer.”
“If airline managers had planned better, the meltdown we’ve witnessed in recent days could have been lessened or averted,” Barnes added.
While it was happening, Montgomery said flight attendants were put in hotels without any heat or water and there were transportation issues for staff where snow was heavy.
Others identifying as Southwest employees on social media shared myriad frustrations, including having to pay for hotel rooms out of pocket when they couldn’t get through to the airline and sleeping on airport floors.
“It’s not just the IT. It’s the human capital, ” Tajer said.
The airline has repeatedly apologized for the travel disruptions this past week and expressed gratitude to employees for “showing up in every single way.”
‘Nightmare’ flight cancellations: 1,000 Southwest flyers sleep overnight at Denver airport
Southwest stock rise:Southwest may be hated by stranded consumers, but Wall Street still likes it
An industry-wide issue
Southwest isn’t the only airline facing these kinds of challenges.
“The glory days for Southwest and other airlines like American Airlines, who’s been plagued by IT issues with scheduling, were in the 80s and 90s, and you still have that IT system,” Tajer said.
Meanwhile Mann says there has been growing customer demand.
“The entire industry has been running around trying to satisfy the amount of customer demands.” Mann said. “That has stretched manpower really thin really across the industry.”
He pointed to the summer of 2021 when airlines like Spirit ended up canceling hundreds of flights due to stormy weather and operational issues, leaving passengers stranded in airports.
Of course, crews get stranded, too.
“We’re going through the same thing, and we want the same end result: We want to get you where you need to go so we can go home to our families, as well,” Tajer said.
See the results