Southwest stock is down more than 5% this morning. DL is flat, AA and UA up a bit.

hivue wrote:

luckyone wrote:

jplatts wrote:

WN really needs to start offering trip insurance options to passengers who book WN flights, especially after the operational meltdown that WN is currently facing.

Some of the other airlines in the U.S., including AA, DL, UA, AS, G4, B6, HA, F9, and NK already offer trip insurance.

There are also plenty of WN customers who would now be willing to pay extra for trip insurance with the operational meltdown that WN is currently facing.

Those are usually through independent, 3rd party vendors and typically not worth the trouble. And historically they haven't needed to because their cancellation policy was the best in the industry pre-pandemic. In this situation, WN is offering refunds and flight credits, which is effectively no different than trip insurance.

Right. Insurance does't ensure anything. Just pays you some money if you get unlucky.

Alot of policies don't cover force majeure events/Acts of God anyway. Alot would depend on how the company defines it and the definition will almost always be the one most friendly to the insurance company.

Midwestindy wrote:

Midwestindy wrote:

530PM EST

49.9% of all todays cancellations worldwide belong to WN.

WN cancellation % by airport:
74% DEN
73% DAL
73% AUS
69% LAS
69% PHX
69% ATL
69% MDW
69% HOU
68% SAN
66% STL
65% BWI
64% BNA
63% MCO

Worst of the worst:
100% IAD
87% BUR
86% PSP
83% MSP
82% IND
80% SDF
78% JAN
77% MEM
77% PHL
77% SFO
76% TUL
76% ORF

10:30 AM EST

The over 80% club:
100% EUG
91% MYR
90% CHS
89% MSP
87% DTW
87% CRP
86% BDL
85% OMA
85% SAV
83% BOI
83% SEA
83% SYR
83% LGA
83% PWM
82% BUR
82% LGB
81% RSW
81% JAX
80% DSM
80% IAD
80% ICT
80% RIC

Looking at the list, a couple cities stand out as being disproportionally affected.
-Several of those cities WN is small, less than 20% of total passengers and/or 5 or less daily flights.
-Several of those cities have other airlines that a big that can pick up the slack. (MSP, IAD etc)
-Several of the cities have other LARGE airports that are close by that can pick up slack with a short drive (BDL, LGB, BUR)

The cities that look disproportionally affected are BOI and OMA. Neither have other airports close by, both are the largest carrier at the respective airport. OMA worse off than BOI because Alaska is pretty big in BOI.

Eolesen wrote:

Whatever limitations Southwest still has for things like red eye flights would be in there operations and planning systems.

I was part of the team that responded to the RFP that resulted in southwest moving to Altea, and I know for a fact that overnight flights and interlining were core requirements Southwest asked for back in 2011. Altea provides all of the foundations for that.

They could interline tomorrow if they wanted to. There are third parties that provide TurnKey service for all of the Interline settlement processes that they don't currently have.

But they don't.

It wouldn't surprise me if DOT forces their hand on that.

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Or Congress? I suspect after this fiasco WN will be subject to FTX-like House and Senate hearings.

Trip insurance will get you a refund and maybe cover some Hotel expenses. It's not going to create a flight that doesn't exist or get you a guaranteed seat on another airline when everybody's already full.

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hivue wrote:

Eolesen wrote:

Whatever limitations Southwest still has for things like red eye flights would be in there operations and planning systems.

I was part of the team that responded to the RFP that resulted in southwest moving to Altea, and I know for a fact that overnight flights and interlining were core requirements Southwest asked for back in 2011. Altea provides all of the foundations for that.

They could interline tomorrow if they wanted to. There are third parties that provide TurnKey service for all of the Interline settlement processes that they don't currently have.

But they don't.

It wouldn't surprise me if DOT forces their hand on that.

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Or Congress? I suspect after this fiasco WN will be subject to FTX-like House and Senate hearings.

Oh please. Congress can't even tie their own shoes.

Congress can't force people to show up to work.

Southwest needs to take a good long hard look at how United was able to operate in through the same exact weather that they had.

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FLYFIRSTCLASS wrote:

UWPAviation wrote:

Western727 wrote:

It's unfortunate that WN is where it is now. Despite preferring to fly WN most of the time I feel very fortunate to have flown on UA this time to YVR to spend time with my in-laws for the holidays. Connecting at DEN on the 21st in the evening we were delayed 3.5 hours mainly to wait for a deicing slot, and we finally got deiced at about 10:30p local time. Most of the dozen or so jets I saw getting deiced on the western-side pads were UA birds, with only one of those being WN.

I feel the same way. I used to be a loyal WN flyer, heck I have their credit card. Now, anytime I check WN there prices are always the most expensive by a mile. And the flight times are horrid. My wife and I are going to Vegas for our anniversary. To fly on WN it was over $1,000 roundtrip. Or I could fly UA for $380 direct? Guess which I picked.

It's just sad because pre-covid, they were always the best flights. Now? I dont even bother looking at them anymore.

Yet this is exactly how Southwest will recover. End of January they will have a major fare sale and offer a boatload of $39 airfares with free bags and everyone will comeback running saying how much "we luv Southwest"

Perhaps the people who aren’t actually stuck will come running back. But I would bet 80-90%+ of these folks that are stranded will never forget this experience and won’t fly WN for a very long time, if ever again, even with $39 fares.

The difference is this occurred during the busiest or 2nd busiest (and arguably most important) time of the year for family/friends traffic. Nobody who is stuck will ever forget Southwest screwed them on Christmas. I read something in a local LA report this morning that one passenger was told no seats are available until January 11th.

I can tell you personally, as somebody who was stuck, I will never use them again. If I can’t get a refund without a 4 hour hold on the phone with customer service since their app is useless, I’ll just be disputing it with my card company.

Pi7472000 wrote:

luckyone wrote:

jplatts wrote:

WN really needs to start offering trip insurance options to passengers who book WN flights, especially after the operational meltdown that WN is currently facing.

Some of the other airlines in the U.S., including AA, DL, UA, AS, G4, B6, HA, F9, and NK already offer trip insurance.

There are also plenty of WN customers who would now be willing to pay extra for trip insurance with the operational meltdown that WN is currently facing.

Those are usually through independent, 3rd party vendors and typically not worth the trouble. And historically they haven't needed to because their cancellation policy was the best in the industry pre-pandemic. In this situation, WN is offering refunds and flight credits, which is effectively no different than trip insurance.

And then those who face cancelations have to cover the expense out of pocket to buy last minute airfares on other airlines that are managed well. Trip insurance would help cover those costs of trip interruption.

Southwest should have to pay the extra costs to passengers as this is much more than just weather delays.

1. Trip insurance is going to cover the cost no differently than a refund. Either way you're paying up front and making up the difference later. Trip insurance takes weeks to get reimbursement.
2. Such a suggestion that Southwest pay extra would require either an act of kindness on their part (not gonna happen), or some type of legislative act.

apodino wrote:

Not sure if this is related but some of the systems Southwest uses, notably their dispatch system, actually run on Linux. This means that many of their work stations in the NOC have two computers, a Linux system and a windows system. Not sure if the Linux systems are related to this meltdown but it is something I thought about today and felt was worth mentioning.

Why in the world would this be worth mentioning? Linux is typically more stable than Windows in just about any metric you'd care to look at. What matters in this case is the actual applications they are using in the NOC, and whether those are capable of actually handling IRROPS in some sort of cogent manner (I suspect the answer is a resounding NO judging by what we're witnessing here). The underlying operating system isn't at fault here.

Somehow a point to point airline should be able to recover quicker than a hub system. But the IT system is unable to assign passengers to whatever P2Ps could be working. Instead of a P2P sturdy web, their IT is obviously a house of cards. Can anyone on line here speak to the status of their IT and what they are doing about it?

All the people blaming this on IT are likely talking out of their ass. This looks like it was strictly a matter of staffing shortages and crews left out of position.

Eolesen wrote:

All the people blaming this on it are talking out of their ass. This looks like it was strictly a matter of staffing.

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Of course it was. Also not being prepared or refusing to prepare once you saw the forecast for the whole Midwest. As said earlier in the thread people will just go back to flying them since they have free bags.

Eolesen wrote:

All the people blaming this on IT are likely talking out of their ass. This looks like it was strictly a matter of staffing shortages and crews left out of position.

Yet "LUV" leadership is still blaming weather and repositioning crews and airplanes.

Eolesen wrote:

All the people blaming this on IT are likely talking out of their ass. This looks like it was strictly a matter of staffing shortages and crews left out of position.

I don't agree. Their IT woes have long been documented here over the years. And I saw a report about a FA labeled by the system as being in MEM when she was actually in RSW, and another being labeled as in MDW when she was actually in BNA. Their computer system appears not to be able to properly track their staff whereabouts...and that seems like a serious foundational issue that hurts IRROPs recovery. Just look at the stats: the other 5 major airlines have largely recovered from their own IRROPs. And they also let a lot of people go during COVID and have been trying to hire people with signing bonuses and such.

I don't really care what's been documented anecdotally here over the years. I spent a year and a half inside Southwest when we were selling them Altea. They're not as backwards as you think.

It's just easier to blame IT out of laziness than accept the fact that someone made dumb operational decisions and allowed that many airplanes to be out of position.

The time to cut back their schedule was when the storms and cold were hitting DEN MDW and HOU, not 3 days after.

Vctony wrote:

The memo sent out suggests a meltdown at DEN as well..

DEN's operational meltdown seems to be crew base specifically and not a lack of operational slack. It's by in far the largest operations with the largest number of flights in/out at Southwest. So if crews were impacted from one of the major hub cities, it would definitely ripple into DEN

luckyone wrote:

Other airlines operate in multiple airports that were affected by this weather system as well. Southwest is no different in that regard with their non-hub-hubs. Delta has big operations in MSP, DTW, NYC, BOS, all of which had a lot of snow and dealt with wind that grounded ops. AA also has operations in Dallas, Chicago, New York. United in Denver, Chicago, DC, New York. None of them melted down like Southwest. Now if they staff the flights as a series of crew trips instead of out and backs that would potentially complicate the situation.

There's a few small differences between Southwest and the Big Three.

One of them is operational slack at the airports listed. Most of the airports listed above have sufficient 'slack' that even during severe weather evens, there's enough operational design to keep running at nearly full capacity. They are able to keep multiple aircraft inbound even with little to no visibility. SFO is a great example. On a clear, sunny day, they're able to do a lot more visual approaches and visual separations which increases capacity. However, when visibility starts dropping, capacity is reduced to keep separation.

Even in severe weather, majority of these airports have multiple 10,000+ feet runways that can help keep planes and there are no concerns about having to block seats due to weight limitations. My understanding is airports like DAL, and MDW can limit aircraft operations. I've personally experienced this myself a few times in MDW where it's the dead of midnight at night and they're still blocking off seats due to performance limitations. Start blocking off twenty, thirty, forty seats at a time consistently for operational performance limitations, and one is very likely going to start filling up whole 737s. Another advantage is the UA/DL/AA hubs tend to have larger planes. Larger planes means there is more likely extra seats at larger airports with longer runways therefore they're more likely to be able to get out passengers on more full planes.

One other major difference I've observed is crew utilization rates. Southwest appears to have higher crew utilization rates. They do this by swapping both pilots and flight attendants out across multiple flights. There's been several flights where I have observed whole crew changes early into pilot and flight attendant's shift, or even the last flight of the night, there's a crew change.

CATIIIevery5yrs wrote:

AWACSooner wrote:

Hoping the ghost of Herb Kelleher visits Bob Jordan tonight and shows him the true meaning of how to run an airline operation. Herb’s WN has been run into the ground the past decade.

Herb never ran an airline this size and scope. Be interesting to see how he’d have it running right now.

You can’t stay on top forever. SWA people learning this right now.

Has Southwest gotten just too big to manage?

Has Southwest gotten just too big to manage?

No, it's just gotten too big to manage the way they ran it 10 and 20 years ago.

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Eolesen wrote:

All the people blaming this on IT are likely talking out of their ass. This looks like it was strictly a matter of staffing shortages and crews left out of position.

When their internal systems can't handle the number of cancellations happening that it in turn causes more cancellations because you can't identify what crew members are where, what would you call that? To me, that is an IT system failure.

Eolesen wrote:

All the people blaming this on IT are likely talking out of their ass. This looks like it was strictly a matter of staffing shortages and crews left out of position.

Does that include the WN CEO or just a.net CEOs? Bob said this today:

"We've been having these issues for the past 20 months," he told CNN. "We've seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT."

He said the airline's operations haven't changed much since the 1990s.

"It's phones, it's computers, it's processing power, it's the programs used to connect us to airplanes -- that's where the problem lies, and it's systemic throughout the whole airline," he said.

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, in a message to employees obtained by CNN, acknowledged many of Murray's concerns, and promised the company will invest in better systems.

"Part of what we're suffering is a lack of tools," Jordan told employees. "We've talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that."

If they're only running 33% of their flights, crew availability shouldn't be an issue. Now getting those crews (and airplanes) back on their lines to "reboot" operations is a major problem. I read somewhere else that they have to manually call each crew, and in some cases they don't even know where they are. That's unacceptable with the technology available today.

Eolesen wrote:

I don't really care what's been documented anecdotally here over the years. I spent a year and a half inside Southwest when we were selling them Altea. They're not as backwards as you think.

It's just easier to blame IT out of laziness than accept the fact that someone made dumb operational decisions and allowed that many airplanes to be out of position.

The time to cut back their schedule was when the storms and cold were hitting DEN MDW and HOU, not 3 days after.

They preemptively cancelled more flights before the storm than anyone and still had a meltdown. Its way more than late decision making.

Again, blaming the technology is lazy. And that includes the CEO.

You manage the cancellations, otherwise the cancellations will manage you. One of those approaches is going to be far more successful.


Someone made a decision to operate at a higher percentage than what the other airlines were doing early on. IT systems didn't make those decisions.

And if this is so widely known that their systems can't handle massive IRROPs, all the more reason that the decisions to pair down the operation should have been made on Wednesday.

Blaming technology for this is like blaming your anti-lock brakes for not stopping you when you were tailgating on an icy road.

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Western727 wrote:

Runway765 wrote:

AVLAirlineFreq wrote:

I've seen several people refer to outdated, outmoded software for WN crew scheduling relative to their peers in the industry. Is this correct? Has it exacerbated a difficult situation?

I was just about to ask the same thing.

I don't know all the details, but I know two things:

1. WN's IT system still cannot support scheduled red-eye flights. As an example, this limits their Hawaii-to-mainland flights, many of which are redeyes on other airlines.
2. As a longstanding annoyance of mine, WN's website and app still lack the capability to search for flight status by flight number only; one must enter the origin and destination. The websites and apps of the other majors have been able to allow users to search by flight number alone for well over a decade.

I also recall seeing statements here and elsewhere that to stay a LCC, WN has wanted to keep its infrastructure as simple as possible. However, after growing so much while maintaining said "simple infrastructure," they're getting their rear ends handed to them. WN's IRROPs recovery capability, once again, has been shown to be seriously under par. Hopefully, they won't be able to get away with it with lip service again this time.

I also have to think their IT is so outdated that they can't handle searching for double connection itineraries either. For some reason, it can't handle more than 2 flight numbers in a single search. So if you're in a small station, you are limited mostly to what's served one stop. even when a 2 stop itinerary isn't that bad, like GSP-ATL-DEN-BZN or PVD-MDW-LAS-RNO.

Hopefully this will result in changes to how they route planes through their network. It never made sense to me why they export delay risk from the east to reliable airports in the west with good weather. They should be able to fly planes all day back and forth ONT-OAK-PDX-SJC-SAN-OAK-PDX etc and never worry about problems from the east messing that up.

highflier92660 wrote:

steveAUS wrote:

Welp I guess its time to show us what ya got, Pete Buttigieg

You read my mind.

I wish some Southwest crews would post here to give us additional insight. Was it a computer software problem, or a "snowballing" aftermath of a few stations in the Midwest and Northeast going down leading to a nationwide ground stop? There are news stories of passengers being told in PHX that their flight to SNA was cancelled due to weather. Please, even the most aeronautically challenged passenger can look-out a terminal window to see that the runway RVRs were sufficient to see from Phoenix to the Moon.

When the plane is doing BOS-BWI-STL-DAl-PHX-SNA with the same pane point to point. It would be weather if the plane was stuck in BWI.

Bottom line is Southwest lost control over its operation in a way that the three legacies did not. For years Southwest has arrogantly gone about touting how much “better” they are than the legacies. In December of 2022 I think we can all definitively say that Southwest has slipped and is now clearly inferior to the legacies when it comes to running an operation. Whatever edge they once had has been lost whether it be due to IT, personnel, rapid growth, understaffing, the wrong people running things, etc… They clearly have too many things not going right.

This meltdown (which is really just the latest and worst in a series since the pandemic) is going to be a watershed moment for the company. Either they will get their heads out of the ground and rethink their entire operation and try to figure out how to be a modern, reliable airline; or they will continue on as they have done in the past and start to look like Sears and Roebuck, the company that completely revolutionized the retail industry in this contrary, then slipped into malaise because they couldn’t get out of their own way.

I used to fly Southwest almost exclusively. I would take one stops and connections on Southwest versus flying anyone else. After their other post-pandemic meltdowns I simply didn’t feel like I could trust them anymore. I’ve only flown them twice since 2020 and that will probably be it for the foreseeable future. I think they may have just squandered their last bit of public goodwill with this one. Media outlets used to be gentler to them and not single them out as much as other airlines. that’s not the case here.

As amusing as this is to watch unfold from the sidelines, this isn't the first airline meltdown to happen in recent years. I don't see any long term reputational damage coming out of this.

For visibility, the cancellations are happening differently today:

DAL is a good example, essentially the flights to non-focus cities are being axed for the day while the focus city to focus city flying is operating much closer to normal.

25% cancelled PHX-DAL
22% cancelled DEN-DAL
11% cancelled MDW-DAL
11% cancelled LAS-DAL
0% cancelled BWI-DAL

Meanwhile 100% of flights are cancelled from DAL to:
MCI, AMA, LAX, FLL, BHM, OMA, PNS, IND, CHS, SDF, CLT, IAH, ORD, RDU, MKE, e.t.c.

https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/today/KDAL

LotsaRunway wrote:

So the WN flights that are actually taking place today and tomorrow, are they aircraft and crews that are already in position and able to fly their normal cycle, or are they repositioning flights designed to move them to the right places, or are they just trying to move a few pieces at a time to move some passengers and keep revenue coming in while trying to figure out a plan?

Are any of the other airlines upguaging in certain city pairs or hubs (e. g. UA in DEN or AA MCO-DFW) to assist and of course look like a hero? While doing so might be difficult on key travel days, one would think UA, AS, and DL might have a little schedule slack today, tomorrow, and Thursday to at least move some people

rta wrote:

As amusing as this is to watch unfold from the sidelines, this isn't the first airline meltdown to happen in recent years. I don't see any long term reputational damage coming out of this.

This is the front page of nearly every media outlet.

There hasn't been an operational malfunction like this in recent memory, let alone during the Holidays.

Long-term maybe not, but for the next 6-12 months people will remember this.

gwrudolph wrote:

Are any of the other airlines upguaging in certain city pairs or hubs (e. g. UA in DEN or AA MCO-DFW) to assist and of course look like a hero? While doing so might be difficult on key travel days, one would think UA, AS, and DL might have a little schedule slack today, tomorrow, and Thursday to at least move some people

There isn't a lot of extra airplane slack until the 4th or so. I can tell you it's been reviewed to add some flights but there just isn't enough crew slack to do it on a large scale.

ucdtim17 wrote:

Hopefully this will result in changes to how they route planes through their network. It never made sense to me why they export delay risk from the east to reliable airports in the west with good weather. They should be able to fly planes all day back and forth ONT-OAK-PDX-SJC-SAN-OAK-PDX etc and never worry about problems from the east messing that up.

Agree. Truly incredulous at the lack of change in routing over the years. SFO gets fog but otherwise intra-California (plus PDX+LAS) is about as low risk as it gets.

Nearly all of BUR's schedule cancelled for a 2nd consecutive day. How????

AMALH747430 wrote:

Bottom line is Southwest lost control over its operation in a way that the three legacies did not. For years Southwest has arrogantly gone about touting how much “better” they are than the legacies. In December of 2022 I think we can all definitively say that Southwest has slipped and is now clearly inferior to the legacies when it comes to running an operation. Whatever edge they once had has been lost whether it be due to IT, personnel, rapid growth, understaffing, the wrong people running things, etc… They clearly have too many things not going right.

This meltdown (which is really just the latest and worst in a series since the pandemic) is going to be a watershed moment for the company. Either they will get their heads out of the ground and rethink their entire operation and try to figure out how to be a modern, reliable airline; or they will continue on as they have done in the past and start to look like Sears and Roebuck, the company that completely revolutionized the retail industry in this contrary, then slipped into malaise because they couldn’t get out of their own way.

I used to fly Southwest almost exclusively. I would take one stops and connections on Southwest versus flying anyone else. After their other post-pandemic meltdowns I simply didn’t feel like I could trust them anymore. I’ve only flown them twice since 2020 and that will probably be it for the foreseeable future. I think they may have just squandered their last bit of public goodwill with this one. Media outlets used to be gentler to them and not single them out as much as other airlines. that’s not the case here.

I’ve always thought the legacies are for the most part much more sophisticated in operational logistics than Southwest and the other LCCs

joeljack wrote:

Midwestindy wrote:

Midwestindy wrote:

530PM EST

49.9% of all todays cancellations worldwide belong to WN.

WN cancellation % by airport:
74% DEN
73% DAL
73% AUS
69% LAS
69% PHX
69% ATL
69% MDW
69% HOU
68% SAN
66% STL
65% BWI
64% BNA
63% MCO

Worst of the worst:
100% IAD
87% BUR
86% PSP
83% MSP
82% IND
80% SDF
78% JAN
77% MEM
77% PHL
77% SFO
76% TUL
76% ORF

10:30 AM EST

The over 80% club:
100% EUG
91% MYR
90% CHS
89% MSP
87% DTW
87% CRP
86% BDL
85% OMA
85% SAV
83% BOI
83% SEA
83% SYR
83% LGA
83% PWM
82% BUR
82% LGB
81% RSW
81% JAX
80% DSM
80% IAD
80% ICT
80% RIC

Looking at the list, a couple cities stand out as being disproportionally affected.
-Several of those cities WN is small, less than 20% of total passengers and/or 5 or less daily flights.
-Several of those cities have other airlines that a big that can pick up the slack. (MSP, IAD etc)
-Several of the cities have other LARGE airports that are close by that can pick up slack with a short drive (BDL, LGB, BUR)

The cities that look disproportionally affected are BOI and OMA. Neither have other airports close by, both are the largest carrier at the respective airport. OMA worse off than BOI because Alaska is pretty big in BOI.

Similar stats but using the 25 largest WN airports (using domestic enplanements Sept 2022) as of 12:30 eastern. A few more cancellations and MidwestIndy's list of 80% club will grow larger.

Most of the biggest connecting hubs are in the 50-60% range with the big notable exception being Nashville. Places like SAN, SAT, MCI run connections too but for as bad as MDW, DEN, BWI, etc must be with misconnects, Nashville seems to be a couple notches (even) worse. I suspect that lack of crew base hurts BNA -- airports with ** below have crew bases if I'm not mistaken. STL lucked out, BNA did not.

82% BUR
79% MSY
77% BNA
77% SNA
77% SAT
76% SAN
76% SJC
76% SMF
72% MCI
71% DCA
66% LAX**
65% TPA
60% AUS
58% OAK**
56% MDW**
56% BWI**
55% ATL**
54% DEN**
53% PHX**
53% STL
51% LAS**
51% DAL**
50% MCO**
49% HOU**

apodino wrote:

Not sure if this is related but some of the systems Southwest uses, notably their dispatch system, actually run on Linux. This means that many of their work stations in the NOC have two computers, a Linux system and a windows system. Not sure if the Linux systems are related to this meltdown but it is something I thought about today and felt was worth mentioning.

Admittedly, I don't know much about WN's IT infrastructure, but there's been zero indication so far that it's related to Linux (or any other OS for that matter).

The vast majority of servers are *nix (Linux, Unix) based. Including >95% of the WWW. Linux is far more stable and extensible than windows for servers (and it generally is much cheaper to acquire and maintain). The Windows desktop UI might be nicer or more familiar to most users, but don't confuse that with the underlying OS.

Midwestindy wrote:

For visibility, the cancellations are happening differently today:

DAL is a good example, essentially the flights to non-focus cities are being axed for the day while the focus city to focus city flying is operating much closer to normal.

25% cancelled PHX-DAL
22% cancelled DEN-DAL
11% cancelled MDW-DAL
11% cancelled LAS-DAL
0% cancelled BWI-DAL

Meanwhile 100% of flights are cancelled from DAL to:
MCI, AMA, LAX, FLL, BHM, OMA, PNS, IND, CHS, SDF, CLT, IAH, ORD, RDU, MKE, e.t.c.

https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/today/KDAL

LotsaRunway wrote:

So the WN flights that are actually taking place today and tomorrow, are they aircraft and crews that are already in position and able to fly their normal cycle, or are they repositioning flights designed to move them to the right places, or are they just trying to move a few pieces at a time to move some passengers and keep revenue coming in while trying to figure out a plan?

It appears to me that they are trying to operate as much of a normal bank as possible between roughly 10am-6pm and then make sure those planes and crews end their day in a base so they can try to hit the reset button tomorrow.

KarlB737 wrote:

CATIIIevery5yrs wrote:

AWACSooner wrote:

Hoping the ghost of Herb Kelleher visits Bob Jordan tonight and shows him the true meaning of how to run an airline operation. Herb’s WN has been run into the ground the past decade.

Herb never ran an airline this size and scope. Be interesting to see how he’d have it running right now.

You can’t stay on top forever. SWA people learning this right now.

Has Southwest gotten just too big to manage?

I used to be a WN hater, until WN saved my butt a few times. When a majority of your hubs takes a weather beating, it is difficult to manage it. Alaska had a hell of a time with it's SEA ice issue.

It was a perfect storm for WN. Not to mention how short they are on staffing. DEN from what I understand had a skeleton crew on the ground ops.

Herb would have been furious and made some serious changes to prevent this. But!! Nobody can stop weather either. The leadership of this airline has no choice but to sit down and figure out what went wrong, and find a way to prevent it in the future. They also need to address the labor shortage across the system.

WN will bounce back. This one definitely hurt, but I suspect WN will be fine.

F9Animal wrote:

KarlB737 wrote:

CATIIIevery5yrs wrote:

Herb never ran an airline this size and scope. Be interesting to see how he’d have it running right now.

You can’t stay on top forever. SWA people learning this right now.

Has Southwest gotten just too big to manage?

I used to be a WN hater, until WN saved my butt a few times. When a majority of your hubs takes a weather beating, it is difficult to manage it. Alaska had a hell of a time with it's SEA ice issue.

It was a perfect storm for WN. Not to mention how short they are on staffing. DEN from what I understand had a skeleton crew on the ground ops.

Herb would have been furious and made some serious changes to prevent this. But!! Nobody can stop weather either. The leadership of this airline has no choice but to sit down and figure out what went wrong, and find a way to prevent it in the future. They also need to address the labor shortage across the system.

WN will bounce back. This one definitely hurt, but I suspect WN will be fine.

100%. The first 2-3 days are not on the airline. Look at how the other airlines fared those days. Nobody was going anywhere. It was a once in a generation storm. Still is in Buffalo.

But yesterday and today and forward are now on Southwest. Of course we’d expect a few delays and cancelations as people and planes get moved from warmer weather cities back to their routes but the total meltdown didn’t start really until yesterday. Personally I think they hit the restart button wrong and they will need to be held accountable for that.

alasizon wrote:

gwrudolph wrote:

Are any of the other airlines upguaging in certain city pairs or hubs (e. g. UA in DEN or AA MCO-DFW) to assist and of course look like a hero? While doing so might be difficult on key travel days, one would think UA, AS, and DL might have a little schedule slack today, tomorrow, and Thursday to at least move some people

There isn't a lot of extra airplane slack until the 4th or so. I can tell you it's been reviewed to add some flights but there just isn't enough crew slack to do it on a large scale.

Ah yep, I guess I was thinking of fleet slack, but not thinking about the staffing challenges associated with such a play

twinotter wrote:

MIflyer12 wrote:

You haven't seen AA/DL/UA just do systemwide shutdowns in the face of weather in the last decade - that kind of stuff is reserved for amateurs like JetBlue.

LOL. Southwest is having a meltdown and your takeaway from it is ... JetBlue sucks!

No, that really isn't my takeway.

I don't remember the U.S. national publication but it cited a WN exec (Saturday?) that was quoted in an internal memo that they needed to invest in internal systems for better ops recovery. Real back-office systems like releasing flight attendants more rapidly from assignments, automatically giving staff hotel rooms when their trips got interrupted, more capable phone systems for reservations... well DUH!

There was a WSJ article maybe ~15 years ago (wish I could find it) describing the recovery from an AA meltdown with execs at DFW starting with yellow legal pads. The major U.S. carriers have ALL gotten too big for that to work anymore. You just can't restart a system with 350, or 800, or 1400 jets across eight hubs with legal pads.

WN just doesn't have the internal perspective to build to manage complexity from within. A system of 800 jets of one type isn't complex. A hub max of ~330 departures isn't complex. A system operating across six time zones isn't complex. A system of one class cabins with open seating isn't complex. They're gong to have to hire a few dozen big personalities from Delta, United (and, god help me, Lufthansa), give them a big room and about 18 months, and then set out implementing substantially all of their recommendations. When the old-time WN naysayers say 'It can't be done - that's not the Southwest way,' those naysayers need to be silenced or terminated on the spot. The old Southwest ways aren't working any more, not at the scale WN has achieved. 71% cancellations days after the storm should convince everybody of that.

gwrudolph wrote:

Are any of the other airlines upguaging in certain city pairs or hubs (e. g. UA in DEN or AA MCO-DFW) to assist and of course look like a hero? While doing so might be difficult on key travel days, one would think UA, AS, and DL might have a little schedule slack today, tomorrow, and Thursday to at least move some people

Doubtful anybody else could come up with any meaningful extra capacity in such a tight timeframe. Everybody suffered a fair bruising from the big storms and cold, crews are already tight, loads during the holidays are already high, we're nearing the end of the crew month, etc.

Instead competitors are raking it in for whatever inventory they have left to see. Helped a friend earlier find just one seat because their MKE-DCA for tomorrow, and they were willing to do MKE, ORD, MSN, ATW, GRB and land in DCA, BWI or IAD. They said they'd take anything tomorrow for under a grand. Seven times a fare was available and I jumped on it, and somewhere between Select Flight and Complete Purchase it would bomb with "something went wrong" or "the flight or fare is no longer available" or "please try your request again" and each time a re-inquiry found that flight gone. And I did not dawdle. The eighth try did the trick and stayed under a grand -- $986 for a one-way Madison-DCA trip on Delta via Detroit.

I'd love to see some sort of metrics on what airlines like United, American and Delta are getting for close-in bookings these days, both volume and average RAMS. Desperation makes people do things they'd never consider.

F9Animal wrote:

KarlB737 wrote:

CATIIIevery5yrs wrote:

Herb never ran an airline this size and scope. Be interesting to see how he’d have it running right now.

You can’t stay on top forever. SWA people learning this right now.

Has Southwest gotten just too big to manage?

I used to be a WN hater, until WN saved my butt a few times. When a majority of your hubs takes a weather beating, it is difficult to manage it. Alaska had a hell of a time with it's SEA ice issue.

It was a perfect storm for WN. Not to mention how short they are on staffing. DEN from what I understand had a skeleton crew on the ground ops.

Herb would have been furious and made some serious changes to prevent this. But!! Nobody can stop weather either. The leadership of this airline has no choice but to sit down and figure out what went wrong, and find a way to prevent it in the future. They also need to address the labor shortage across the system.

WN will bounce back. This one definitely hurt, but I suspect WN will be fine.

Of course WN will bounce back. Why wouldn't they? The vast majority of people in the USA are completely unaware this is even going on, and most will forget by next week.

MIflyer12 wrote:

twinotter wrote:

MIflyer12 wrote:

You haven't seen AA/DL/UA just do systemwide shutdowns in the face of weather in the last decade - that kind of stuff is reserved for amateurs like JetBlue.

LOL. Southwest is having a meltdown and your takeaway from it is ... JetBlue sucks!

No, that really isn't my takeway.

I don't remember the U.S. national publication but it cited a WN exec (Saturday?) that was quoted in an internal memo that they needed to invest in internal systems for better ops recovery. Real back-office systems like releasing flight attendants more rapidly from assignments, automatically giving staff hotel rooms when their trips got interrupted, more capable phone systems for reservations... well DUH!

There was a WSJ article maybe ~15 years ago (wish I could find it) describing the recovery from an AA meltdown with execs at DFW starting with yellow legal pads. The major U.S. carriers have ALL gotten too big for that to work anymore. You just can't restart a system with 350, or 800, or 1400 jets across eight hubs with legal pads.

WN just doesn't have the internal perspective to build to manage complexity from within. A system of 800 jets of one type isn't complex. A hub max of ~330 departures isn't complex. A system operating across six time zones isn't complex. A system of one class cabins with open seating isn't complex. They're gong to have to hire a few dozen big personalities from Delta, United (and, god help me, Lufthansa), give them a big room and about 18 months, and then set out implementing substantially all of their recommendations. When the old-time WN naysayers say 'It can't be done - that's not the Southwest way,' those naysayers need to be silenced or terminated on the spot. The old Southwest ways aren't working any more, not at the scale WN has achieved. 71% cancellations days after the storm should convince everybody of that.

Nothing is complex about the WN network…except the point2point routings of plane and crews. When the vast majority of the network is point2point, it becomes almost impossible to recover from a massive winter storm, especially if the IT infrastructure is not up to the task of finding a solution. The IT is barely sufficient for normal ops, much less irregular ops. I think we will see this week if the existing IT can manage the 30% of ops they’re planning to run in an effort to recover. But I completely agree that this highlights the need for new blood in HQ. The old guard needs to be put out to pasture and most of the VP positions need to be permanently cut.

knope2001 wrote:

gwrudolph wrote:

Are any of the other airlines upguaging in certain city pairs or hubs (e. g. UA in DEN or AA MCO-DFW) to assist and of course look like a hero? While doing so might be difficult on key travel days, one would think UA, AS, and DL might have a little schedule slack today, tomorrow, and Thursday to at least move some people

Doubtful anybody else could come up with any meaningful extra capacity in such a tight timeframe. Everybody suffered a fair bruising from the big storms and cold, crews are already tight, loads during the holidays are already high, we're nearing the end of the crew month, etc.

Instead competitors are raking it in for whatever inventory they have left to see. Helped a friend earlier find just one seat because their MKE-DCA for tomorrow, and they were willing to do MKE, ORD, MSN, ATW, GRB and land in DCA, BWI or IAD. They said they'd take anything tomorrow for under a grand. Seven times a fare was available and I jumped on it, and somewhere between Select Flight and Complete Purchase it would bomb with "something went wrong" or "the flight or fare is no longer available" or "please try your request again" and each time a re-inquiry found that flight gone. And I did not dawdle. The eighth try did the trick and stayed under a grand -- $986 for a one-way Madison-DCA trip on Delta via Detroit.

I'd love to see some sort of metrics on what airlines like United, American and Delta are getting for close-in bookings these days, both volume and average RAMS. Desperation makes people do things they'd never consider.

My BNA-MSP flight last night had 70+ empty seats originally and went out with 10 empty seats. We had a ton of people that were spending the night in MSP and connecting the West Coast.

Midwestindy wrote:

80% IAD

[Asking out of ignorance] Why? The weather in the Washington DC area has been sunny for the last several days. Very cold but sunny, and no snow. Only one day with strong gusty winds. I haven't checked, but I don't think there have been any problems/delays at IAD. Or BWI, for that matter, which also was fairly high on the black list.

Eolesen wrote:

The time to cut back their schedule was when the storms and cold were hitting DEN MDW and HOU, not 3 days after.

Easier said than done. The problem is one all airlines face; to run an airline in today’s day and age, you have to see load factors in the 75-80% range on average, and that translates to mid to high 90s in high demand times like the holidays. End result? When you preemptively cancel or pare back some of your schedule, even just a bit, you have little to no slack left to protect your customers, even if you move them offline, which WN doesn’t.

What would have been a one day event 30 years ago now takes a week to unwind fully. And it’s because of the economic realities of running a lean airline operation with a focus on offering low fares to keep demand high.

Eolesen wrote:

All the people blaming this on IT are likely talking out of their ass. This looks like it was strictly a matter of staffing shortages and crews left out of position.

In the modern era, you can blame EVERYTHING on IT, and people will buy it.

IMHO, this seems that the IT failures were the result of other factors overloading the system, from personnel shortages to management fiascos.

The FAA should be asking if SWA has operational control of the airline. It sure does not appear to be at this time. Not knowing where your crews are for days and then trying to stick them in jets to fly is not good. Even though the chances are they haven’t been flying you have to be able to see and show what a pilot did previously to his current assignment to assure legality.

alasizon wrote:

gwrudolph wrote:

Are any of the other airlines upguaging in certain city pairs or hubs (e. g. UA in DEN or AA MCO-DFW) to assist and of course look like a hero? While doing so might be difficult on key travel days, one would think UA, AS, and DL might have a little schedule slack today, tomorrow, and Thursday to at least move some people

There isn't a lot of extra airplane slack until the 4th or so. I can tell you it's been reviewed to add some flights but there just isn't enough crew slack to do it on a large scale.

Southwest's Ramp Union Contract will not allow "Outside help". A contractor can't even touch a WN bag, for example, outside of a handful of exempted small cities, mostly International.

FLYFIRSTCLASS wrote:

F9Animal wrote:

KarlB737 wrote:

Has Southwest gotten just too big to manage?

I used to be a WN hater, until WN saved my butt a few times. When a majority of your hubs takes a weather beating, it is difficult to manage it. Alaska had a hell of a time with it's SEA ice issue.

It was a perfect storm for WN. Not to mention how short they are on staffing. DEN from what I understand had a skeleton crew on the ground ops.

Herb would have been furious and made some serious changes to prevent this. But!! Nobody can stop weather either. The leadership of this airline has no choice but to sit down and figure out what went wrong, and find a way to prevent it in the future. They also need to address the labor shortage across the system.

WN will bounce back. This one definitely hurt, but I suspect WN will be fine.

Of course WN will bounce back. Why wouldn't they? The vast majority of people in the USA are completely unaware this is even going on, and most will forget by next week.

What are you talking about…? The WN meltdown is on the front page of every major paper in America today, and if it isn’t, it will be tomorrow. The story will dominate the national news tonight, and tomorrow, and as long as people are stuck, sleeping in airports. The Southwest apologists in this thread are absurd. This is a serious operational meltdown of massive scale.