Sure, you have a very complex system of moving pieces, passengers, support staff, and crew. The system was forced to a staggered stop. Now, to restart the system from the current state, there are various options:

1 - pick a start time, and move everything back into position to start at that time
2 - pick a time to restart which has the closest configuration of pieces, support staff and crew to minimize expensive piece and people relocations
3 - confounding constraints :
a - FAA crew rest time constraints. . with documentation.
b - supporting staff constraints / luggage / fueling / supplies
c - Passenger rebooking to start time pieces with the future open seats

Now its a huge operational research schedule program to get everything lined up to get ready to go, especially with the stranded passengers and luggage trying to reschedule in a system that may not be designed to handle that much traffic at once.

However, the more manual data inputs are needed, and manual communications needed for data inputs, the higher human staffing needed and time to update and reconfigure the system before even reticketing the stranded passengers. The longer the outage, the more difficult the restart due to the backlog of rebookings and openings. . .

So if the system isn't totally digitized with automated feeds and reschedule optimization algorithms built, one gets the result which SWA recently exhibited.

Doesn't mean that the weather and operational system design weren't the initiating factors to the shut down. What it means that the restart probably took longer than other airlines due to the amount of manual input required and old algorithms to run to restart the system.

operations guy

Did you catch on the news tonight how some of the other big airlines were selling tickets for missed SW flights for thousands of dollars a piece?

... so I guess a whole lot of commuter flights would cease to exist. And if a hub has to shut down for inclement weather - oh well. No one's going anywhere for awhile. And no one is coming to the area for awhile either - since a lot of those regional airports aren't hubs, and you've just eliminated that option.

no, i don't watch TV news. . sorry. .

But last minute tickets are usually priced for corporate passengers, so not surprised. .

I once was told to book a flight to London that morning, leaving that night. . very expensive
versus a planned 7+ day advance ticket. something like 5k against a 2K of a 7 day advanced ticket

future former corporate guy

A post on Facebook
 

While I personally have no idea whether this is legitimate and from an actual Southwest pilot, having read numerous other articles basically saying the same thing - I tend to believe it.



"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.”

I understand that fee but these are stranded people trying to get home so let’s charge $5,000. + for a ticket, lol.

I tried to go from Albany to Orlando $3241. I don’t remember which one it was because I tried several airlines.

Saw parts of this post elsewhere. Though the operations staff is unionized, there is a possibility of a union perspective, wanting to oust the current CEO, or at least want to make a case for mgmt change or a union bargaining position at the next contract renewal.

My only comment is that my undergraduate is in operations, and i worked in operations for 8 years prior to going "corporate". Over 30 years in corporate, its obvious who has a worked the front lines and understands operations and who has accounting skills, and just looks at numbers. ..

At my current employer, they have hundreds of corporate conceptual theory goals PowerPoints, and zero actual execution improvements, and so our comprehensive reporting systems are literally non existent, meaning 10 years old, very similar to the SWA comprehensive scheduling system. . .

I feel the operations pain, and the corporate grift is very high these days. . .

future former finance guy

"...there is a possibility of a union perspective wanting to oust the current CEO, or at least want to make a case for mgmt change or a union bargaining position at the next contract renewal."

If you read it again, the person writing it is happy with the current CEO and is claiming that the previous one, who had no operational experience, is the one who only looked at the immediate financial bottom line and not operations overall.

Having spent 45+ years working my way up, from the very bottom in a tough industry, I have been on both sides of the CBA table, as well as a union rep and eventual Vice President - so I have truly seen it from all sides.

I totally agree that the best leaders are those that have been on the "front lines," have done a plethora of the positions in the company and spend the time/effort/budgeting to try and make the employees safer, more productive AND appreciated.

Yeah, I missed that Gary retired this year, and I remember that Herb was great. . Gary is the one who didn't make the investments over the last decade. . . I dislike accountants, and make it well known. They know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing. .

Absolutely, customers and employees must be happy, or a public service company doesn't work. .

What “climate change that doesn’t exist”? It’s winter, so there are blizzards and severe cold and snow. Not all areas were affected by this latest storm. Mainly the Midwest, Rocky Mountains, and eastern seaboard.

Unfortunately, that affected cross country flights. The SW CEO admitted they have infrastructure problems aka out-dated software and technology. But there are also personnel problems. For instance, many of the ground crew in Denver called in fake sick because they didn’t want to work in such conditions without weather-proof equipment and protective clothing which they didn’t have. That caused a chain reaction that badly screwed things up along with all the other things that were going on simultaneously.

If you were not personally impacted why does it matter? It’s the state of air travel. Adapt to the circumstances and move forward. It will happen again,

It’s incomprehensible people don’t put an AirTag in there luggage. Make it easy to find

The "weather event" (if that's the term you prefer) spanned most of the entire country, from the Pacific Northwest to the east coast. Parts of Texas had no power.

I'm not reading any actual reports of fake sick-calls in Denver. Only that there were more callouts than usual.

25 or so years ago we had reliable air travel. Could fly from NY to Florida same day for cruise.

Now would not even think about same day travel. Sad.

Average on-time arrival rates (within 15 minutes of scheduled time) have been bouncing around between 75 and 80% for the last 25 years. A bit of "inflation" on the flight times has presumably helped the statistics. If you absolutely have to be there at a specific time then going in the day before has always been the rule. Other steps to mitigate the risk is never take the last flight of the day, avoid connections if at all possible, and when you do have a connection, allow 3 hours, if at all possible. Also, the major airlines appear to be a bit better at dealing with problems than the discount airlines. For example, Delta vs. Frontier. When I traveled almost weekly for work, most of the issues I saw were mechanical problems. In that case, flying a major airline to and from their hubs will help.