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Originally posted by sigarms229:

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I never understood why people loved Southwest so much.

Agreed. My best friend loves Southwest and I've never understood why.

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Originally posted by Gustofer:

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Originally posted by sigarms229:

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I never understood why people loved Southwest so much.

Agreed. My best friend loves Southwest and I've never understood why.

Cost. They are generally about the cheapest flights out there...or used to be, anyway.

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Originally posted by chellim1:

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Matching a thousand aircraft, several thousand daily flights, and tens of thousands of flight crew is a staggeringly complex puzzle, which has to not only work today but put everything in place to work again tomorrow.

My experience is that 98% of flight crew will bust their butts during these events. There are many who voluntarily worked extra days this week, missing time off with their families. I expect Southwest's schedulers and dispatchers are working huge overtime too.

That is true. I have no doubt that most of them worked their butts off during this situation.

Still... I wonder how short they are on flight crew after the vax requirements?

Nobody seems to know why Southwest cancelled so many flights compared to all the other airlines. They’re sticking with “bad weather.” But a clue appeared in one statement blaming the chaos was also due to problems with “scheduling software.” Software the airline has been using for decades.

I wonder if the software’s “problems” had something to do with not having enough pilots and crew to schedule. For some reason.

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Originally posted by OKCGene:

Turns out they were 1 Flight Attendant short, and she was told it was a legal requirement to have the required number on board. Who knew that??? They finally got one on board, but it took quite awhile to do.

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A source inside Southwest Airlines recently passed this on and gave me permission to share. This is worth reading:
“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.” #southwestairlines

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Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

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Originally posted by OKCGene:

Turns out they were 1 Flight Attendant short, and she was told it was a legal requirement to have the required number on board. Who knew that??? They finally got one on board, but it took quite awhile to do.

# of FAs is based on seats, not on how many passengers are actually on board. During Covid, some airlines were removing seats to get down below a threshold so they could have one fewer FA per flight and thus save payroll expense.

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A source inside Southwest Airlines recently passed this on and gave me permission to share. This is worth reading:
“What happened to Southwest Airlines?

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Originally posted by OKCGene:

Turns out they were 1 Flight Attendant short, and she was told it was a legal requirement to have the required number on board. Who knew that???
.

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Originally posted by bendable:
Good friend back from Denver for the holidays thinks So. West is the kitty's whiskers.
Flys with the
Seven times per year .

Iam very much against 80% of all this new law making.

( I understand Illinois averages around 150 new laws per year)

But maybe the airline industry should be made accountable for their actions for all the financial ramifications.

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Originally posted by jeffxjet:
Just remember, THIS is the unintended consequences of previous laws against the airlines. Remember the law that said if an airline was delayed more than 3 hours passengers would need compensation to make up for it. And we all said airlines will just cancel a flight if the delay is expected to be longer than 3 hours. I know this is not the root cause of the problem in question, but it surely is a causal factor. Any new punishment laws will have a lot of unintended consequences, and NONE of them will favor the passenger.

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Originally posted by straightshooter1:
....hoping Alaska Airlines promptly refunds her cancellation of the back-up flight.