Tag Archives: Southwest

Shaw Communications, Li Auto, Southwest and others

December 30, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Check out the companies making headlines before the bell:

Shaw Communications (SJR) – Canada’s Competition Tribunal dismissed an attempt by the country’s competition watchdog to block the $26 billion acquisition of the telecom company by rival Rogers Communications (RCI). Shaw surged 10.1% in the premarket, while Rogers gained 0.4%.

Li Auto (LI) – Li Auto said it expected to deliver more than 20,000 of its electric vehicles this month, higher than the 14,087 the China-based EV maker delivered in December 2021.

Southwest Airlines (LUV) – Southwest said it planned to return to a regular flight schedule Friday and promised to reimburse customers for any reasonable expenses they incurred due to the airline canceling thousands of flights over the past week.

Tesla (TSLA) – Tesla is down 1% in the premarket after posting its first back-to-back gains since November 22 to 23. Tesla has not risen three days in a row since a four-day win streak from October 25 to 28. The stock is still down 65% for 2022.

Audacy (AUD) – Audacy stock rallied 9.7% in the premarket after the small-cap radio station operator said it will auction off the radio.com internet domain with a reported minimum bid of $2.5 million.

Mesa Air Group (MESA) – The regional air carrier reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss and revenue that fell short of analyst estimates. Mesa shares fell 3% in premarket trading.

Enovix (ENVX) – The lithium-ion battery manufacturer appointed Raj Talluri as its chief executive officer, effective January 18. Talluri was senior vice president and general manager of Micron Technology‘s (MU) mobile business unit. Enovix jumped 5.1% in premarket action.

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Southwest Airlines Gears Up for a Normal Flight Schedule on Friday After Mass Cancellations

December 30, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Southwest Airlines Co.

LUV 3.70%

executives said the airline is gearing up to resume its full flying schedule on Friday, removing limits on ticket sales and rebuilding crew schedules after an operational meltdown led it to cancel thousands of flights over the past week.

Executives also pledged to continue work to update technology systems that company and labor officials have blamed for exacerbating Southwest’s troubles, leaving scheduling systems jammed and crews dispersed as the airline struggled to rebound from a winter storm.

“I can’t imagine that it doesn’t boost the focus in certain areas, maybe shift priorities based on what we learned,” Chief Executive

Bob Jordan

told reporters Thursday. “This has been an incredible disruption, and we can’t have this again.”

Southwest canceled nearly two-thirds of its flights Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, as part of an effort to dig out from a cascading meltdown after last week’s severe winter storm threw operations into disarray. While other airlines were able to recover from the brutal weather within a few days, Southwest continued to spiral.

Southwest has canceled nearly 16,000 flights in the past week, according to FlightAware. The airline scrubbed 39 flights scheduled for Friday that Chief Operating Officer

Andrew Watterson

said it was unable to staff, but executives said they believe they are ready for a smooth operation Friday.

Mr. Jordan told employees Thursday morning in a video message that shrinking Southwest’s operations had helped, with 95% of its flights on time on Wednesday. “Together we did what we needed to do to set ourselves up to operate our regular schedule tomorrow,” he said.

As it works to resume normal operations, Southwest faces heightened scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers, who have said they are closely monitoring the airline’s response to the crisis.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday wrote to Mr. Jordan, describing the disruption as “unacceptable.” He reiterated his expectation that the airline will assist stranded passengers, honor commitments to cover passengers’ expenses, issue prompt refunds and ensure passengers are reunited with their bags. The airline has said it is providing those accommodations now.

Union leaders who represent Southwest pilots, flight attendants and other workers have faulted what they said was the airline’s lack of investment in technology over the years for many of its problems. Executives have acknowledged the need to upgrade inadequate platforms, such as the SkySolver system that it uses to redo crew schedules during disruptions and that was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems over the weekend.

Baggage Stuck in Southwest Airlines Cancellation Fiasco

Mr. Watterson said Thursday in a call with reporters that the upgrading process had already been under way. Southwest has made crew-scheduling its own department, hired more staff and made what he described as incremental improvements to current systems as it began to look for replacements. He said the “modest work” that had been done had started to pay off this fall, but that the winter storm created unique challenges.

While the airline has started to contemplate the broader questions of what it could have done differently, executives said their more immediate task this week has been to piece the airline back together—making sure that pilots and flight attendants are where they need to be, reuniting bags with their owners and ensuring that planes are tuned up and ready to go.

In an effort to make sure the airline is ready for Friday, Southwest added some flights for passengers on Thursday and ferried planes and crew to position them, Mr. Watterson said.

Ticket sales resumed, executives said, after the airline had limited bookings on remaining flights for much of this week, hoping to avoid a scenario where customers bought seats on flights that would ultimately be canceled. The airline also wanted to make sure seats would be available to take pilots and flight attendants where they had to be on Friday, Mr. Watterson said.

Southwest Airlines was ferrying planes and crew to make sure the company was ready for a full flying schedule.

Photo:

Matt York/Associated Press

To get to this point, Southwest sought volunteers to help work through a deluge of tasks to repair schedules for pilots and flight attendants.

At the height of the disruption, the airline’s crew schedulers had to revert to manually assigning pilots and flight attendants to flights when automated software couldn’t keep pace with the volume of changes. Even with the smaller schedule, the group was overwhelmed by the remaining workload, Mr. Watterson told employees this week.

Former crew schedulers working in other areas of the business stepped in to triage inbound phone calls, according to an internal memo Wednesday from

Lee Kinnebrew,

Southwest’s vice president of flight operations, and

Brendan Conlon,

vice president of crew scheduling. Other employee groups were being trained to support overwhelmed schedulers.

Mr. Watterson said the “volunteer army” has been trained on systems and could be called on to pitch in again if the airline begins to see signs that current technology is becoming overwhelmed, as it works on broader fixes. Airline executives said they are confident that existing technology systems can handle the airline’s normal operations while it works on a plan to update them.

Southwest’s ground-operations staff worked to scan thousands of missing bags to figure out where they had ended up. The airline set up new call centers to investigate lost items and update customers, Mr. Kinnebrew and Mr. Conlon wrote. The final step was to coordinate with FedEx Corp. and other delivery companies to truck bags between airports and reduce the strain on Southwest’s remaining flights this week, they wrote.

Running a smaller schedule introduced some new technical challenges, executives said. Planes can’t stay parked for long before they need to be put into short- or long-term storage, so the airline had to rotate through its fleet to ensure that aircraft weren’t sitting idle too long. Maintenance workers had to fan out to different locations to perform checks and regular work on planes that weren’t in their usual locations,

Kurt Kinder,

vice president of maintenance operations, wrote to employees Wednesday.

Southwest Airlines has canceled nearly 16,000 flights since Dec. 22, as customers have struggled to reach their destinations and find lost luggage. The airline said its reduced schedule would extend at least until Thursday. Photo: Albuquerque Journal/Zuma Press

Write to Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com

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Southwest Airlines restoring flights Friday as it looks to prevent another breakdown

December 29, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Southwest Airlines is hoping to end a weeklong debacle and bring back almost 4,000 flights Friday as it reckons with how to prevent a repeat of one of the worst operational disasters in its history.

After canceling more than 15,700 flights over an eight-day stretch since Dec. 22, the Dallas-based air carrier said Thursday that it finally has pilots, flight attendants and aircraft in place to return to a normal schedule Friday. To make that possible, the company said it had to shut down two-thirds of its flights between Tuesday and Thursday to stem a cascade of cancellations that was escalating by the day and left millions of passengers stranded during the Christmas holiday.

Leaders blamed the issues on bad weather and an “overmatched” crew rescheduling technology system that couldn’t keep up with the task of reassigning thousands of pilots and flight attendants after winter weather hit major bases in Denver and Chicago.

But during a media call Thursday, CEO Bob Jordan, chief operating officer Andrew Watterson and other senior managers at Southwest were short on answers about whether or not another meltdown could happen again.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my 35 years in terms of the impact on the network, the level of transactions, the complexity of the solves, all of those things — none of those being excuses,” Jordan said during the call. “But there will be priorities that come out of responding to this because this is not something we want to happen again for our customers or for our employees.”

Southwest leaders are unsure exactly how many passengers will need to be accommodated in the coming days because the level of disruption was so deep that many chose other forms of transportation, bought expensive last-minute flights on other airlines or missed their holiday vacations altogether as the breakdown lasted more than a week and spanned the Christmas weekend.

About 2.3 million passengers were disrupted during the meltdown.

“We don’t know how many people still need to travel,” Watterson said. “It depends on who still wants to travel, so to speak. And so easily the first five days of the year, I can see there be room for people should they need to travel.”

It wasn’t until late Wednesday that Southwest even communicated to employees, many still stranded in hotel rooms far from home, that it would attempt to reset the flight schedule fresh on Friday. Southwest told customers Thursday morning and then communicated it to the public later that day. Southwest also put tickets back on sale for Friday and the weekend after halting sales earlier in the week to prevent those bookings from being canceled as well as giving space to move pilot and flight attendants.

Southwest spent the last two days developing a plan to get pilots and flight attendants back into position to resume trips they had originally scheduled before the meltdown. Cutting around 2,500 flights a day gave the carrier the resources to track down flight attendants and pilots scattered across the country and develop a strategy to end the cascading problems.

With the automated systems to reassign pilots and flight attendants useless, Southwest trained a group of about 1,000 employees to help reschedule crew members manually, calling them individually, Watterson said.

Having gone through this series of weather and operational disruptions, Watterson said the company can reapply that process again in the event of another breakdown.

Otherwise, it will take the airline years to fully reimplement new crew scheduling technology systems.

“It’s just a large and complicated project,” Jordan said. “That’s not meant to be an excuse; it’s just a fact.”

“I think a discussion out of this will be what can we do, certainly, in critical areas of the plan to accelerate that and accelerate that development.”

The company has been working to upgrade and replace older technology, but it takes time, he said.

“We have a very large infrastructure spending plan every year — capital spending plan and technology and other areas, but a lot in technology,” he said. “And the systems are complicated. We have legacy systems in some cases. And it’s just a period of time it takes to grind through those replacements. So those are multi-year projects.”

The delays and cancellations have already prompted an examination from the Department of Transportation and scrutiny from politicians in Washington, D.C.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg sent a letter to Jordan Thursday demanding the company take care of customers financially burdened by the travel disruptions.

“These front-line employees are not to blame for mistakes at the leadership level,” Buttigieg wrote in the letter. “I hope and expect that you will follow the law, take the steps laid out in this letter, and provide me with a prompt update on Southwest’s efforts to do right by the customers it has wronged.”

And after meeting with representatives from three of the company’s unions Wednesday, Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, and Jake Ellzey, R-Arlington, issued a joint statement Thursday that said, in part:

“There has always been strong bipartisan support in Congress for the growth of Southwest Airlines …

“However, it is clear that for some time Southwest has run unacceptable risks and tried to get by with an unacceptably thin margin of error — both in staffing and in technology — and that this crisis was both predictable and preventable.

“The payment of hundreds of millions in dividends to shareholders and a healthy profit through the first three quarters of this year clearly show that Southwest can afford to address the issues at hand but has chosen not to.” They challenged Southwest executives to compensate passengers fairly and take steps to prevent future meltdowns.

As customer cancellations piled up along with mountains of luggage in airports across the country, Southwest Airlines tried to communicate with customers that it planned to “honor reasonable requests” for reimbursement of hotels, food, transportation and even tickets on other airlines.

“We’ve notified customers that if we canceled their flights, they are eligible for a full refund,” said chief commercial officer Ryan Green. “If they had to make alternative travel arrangements, we’re going to reimburse customers for those travel expenses. We will ship a customer’s bag to them and no cost to them. And over the last couple of days, we’ve stood up websites in order to make that as easy on our customers as possible.”

The company would evaluate reimbursing costs of other extenuating circumstances from the flight disruptions, he said.

However, Green acknowledged that there are complications, such as determining what requests are reasonable for reimbursement and figuring out how long it will take to process all the claims.

“Realistically it’s going to take us several weeks here to get back to customers,” he said. “We are working as diligently as we can and automating as much of that as we can to process through those quickly. But it’s our goal to work through that as quickly as possible.”

Southwest has canceled just 39 flights for Friday as of noon Thursday, according to Flightaware.com. It canceled more than 2,000 flights every day this week stretching back to Monday.

Southwest Airlines Pilots Association president Casey Murray said the carrier spent Wednesday trying to get crew members back to their home base airports so they could be dispersed out Thursday and be in place to start regular flying on Friday.

“The hope is to start fresh Friday with everyone in the right place,” Murray said.

While Southwest was only operating about 1,500 of its 4,000 daily scheduled passenger flights this week, it also conducted 104 “ferry flights” on Thursday just to move crew members and airplanes around the system to be ready for Friday, Watterson said.

Southwest plans to offer nearly 4,000 flights a day over the New Year’s weekend as millions of travelers look to return back home, to college and back to work after the holiday break.

Union leaders have blamed airline leadership for letting company technology fall woefully behind the demands of running such a complex operation.

Jordan pledged to customers that the company will make changes to ensure this kind of disruption doesn’t happen again.

In the memo, Watterson said they plan to put pilots and flight attendants on flights that they had originally been scheduled for instead of trying to rebuild assignments from scratch.

“Customers want to fly what they originally bought, so going to that schedule is actually requires the least changes and is the least disruptive,” Watterson said.

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Four charts explaining the Southwest Airlines crisis

December 29, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

CNN
—

A blast of severe winter weather last week caused thousands of Southwest Airlines flight cancellations and spiraled into a complete meltdown of its flight system. In the days since, the carrier’s scramble to recover has been slow and, some passengers argue, largely unsuccessful. But experts say Southwest’s mess is actually the culmination of issues that have been building over several years.

Since Dec. 22, the beleaguered airline has canceled more than half of its typical flight schedule, and by late Wednesday about 87% of all canceled flights in the US were from Southwest alone, according to industry trackers FlightRadar24 and FlightAware.

The dire situation, which has exasperated passengers and caught the eye of government regulators, has magnified this week as other major airlines recovered from the extreme cold, ice and snow that gripped much of the United States over the holiday weekend.

The company has apologized to its passengers and employees for the daily cancellations and reduced its capacity by roughly two thirds on Thursday, according to a CNN review of flight data.

This week’s meltdown is not the first time the company has found itself in this predicament. In October 2021, Southwest canceled more than 2,000 flights over a four-day period. While the airline blamed the crisis partly on bad weather in Florida, Southwest canceled flights for far longer than its competitors.

But much of Southwest’s mess may be the result of long-term problems unrelated to the weather.

Chief among them are outdated internal processes and information technology. Southwest’s scheduling system hasn’t changed much since the 1990s, according to Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.

– Source:
CNN
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Southwest canceled about two-thirds of its flights. See how travelers are faring

Southwest has also acknowledged the company’s outdated infrastructure. “We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that,” CEO Bob Jordan told employees in a memo obtained by CNN.

Over the years, the airline’s cancellation rate has crept up, tripling from 2013 to September 2022, the most recent data available from US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which tracks the airlines’ performance, and well before the recent crisis.

The bureau has only released data for 2022 through September. To ensure a fair comparison, CNN only analyzed the carrier’s data from January to September in previous years.

Cancellation rates among airlines fluctuate year-to-year, depending on weather and other factors, such as Covid-19, which resulted in a major industry-wide disruption in the early months of the pandemic in 2020.

But Southwest has consistently failed to perform as well as its competitors when it comes to cancellations, according to bureau data.

In several years over the last decade, the airline had higher cancellation rates compared to other major airlines, the data shows.

It’s not just cancellations. Southwest has also seen its on-time percentage slide in recent years to the lowest point in a decade. Through September of 2022, well before the carrier’s current struggles, only about 7 in 10 of its flights have arrived on time.

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Southwest Airlines’ troubles continuing: Thousands more flights canceled

December 29, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Southwest Airlines scrubbed thousands of flights again Wednesday as the company faced frustration from passengers and scrutiny from federal officials over its handling of its schedule in the aftermath of the massive storm that wrecked holiday travel plans across the U.S.

By Wednesday evening, about 86% of all canceled flights in the U.S. were from Southwest, which scrubbed more than 2,500 flights Wednesday, according to tracking service Flight Aware. On Tuesday, a day after most U.S. airlines had recovered from the storm, Southwest had called off about 2,600 more flights. Those flights accounted for more than 80% of the 3,000 trips that got canceled nationwide Tuesday, according to FlightAware.

And the chaos seems certain to continue. The airline has scrubbed more than 2,300 flights set for Thursday as it tries to restore order to its mangled schedule. That’s another huge percentage of all scrapped U.S. flights for the day as noted by FlightAware, and 58% of Southwest’s Thursday schedule.

Southest canceled more than 15,000 flights over the past week, according to data posted by FlightAware.

The company issued another apology Wednesday, but it could still take days before the situation is back to normal.

Several major airlines — including American, Delta, and United — tell CBS News they’re capping fares in select cities to help stranded customers get home.

Southwest has blamed the massive winter storm last week for putting its crews out of position and is now running a reduced flight schedule in hopes of getting back on track by the new year.

Still, customers at airports with major Southwest operations faced long lines hoping to find a seat on another flight. They described waiting hours on hold for help, only to be cut off. Some tried to rent cars to get to their destinations sooner. Others found spots to sleep on the floor. Luggage piled up in huge heaps.

Conrad Stoll, a 66-year-old retired construction worker in Missouri, planned to fly from Kansas City to Los Angeles for his father’s 90th birthday party until his Southwest flight was canceled early Tuesday. He said he won’t get to see his 88-year-old mother either.

“I went there in 2019, and she looked at me and said, ‘I’m not going to see you again.'” Stoll said. “My sister has been taking care of them, and she’s just like, ‘They’re really losing it really quick.'”

Stoll hopes to get another chance to see his parents in the spring, when the weather is warmer.

Holiday travel chaos continues with flight delays and cancellations

03:15

Adontis Barber, a 34-year-old jazz pianist from Kansas City, Missouri, had camped out in the city’s airport since his Southwest flight was canceled Saturday and wondered if he would ever get to a New Year’s gig in Washington, D.C.

“I give up,” he said. “I’m starting to feel homeless.”

The carrier also continued to be deluged with questions and complaints online. Said one person on Twitter, “[S]o let’s get this straight. My bags get lost, and then DAMAGED, and when I try to contact you guys over the phone, for the past WEEK, all I get is two rings and the busy tone? What kind of customer service is that?”

CEO apologizes

In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be “back on track before next week.”

Jordan blamed the winter storm for snarling the airline’s “highly complex” network. He said Southwest’s tools for recovering from disruptions work “99% of the time, but clearly we need to double down” on upgrading systems to avoid a repeat of this week.

Jordan, a 34-year Southwest veteran who became CEO in February, said he is “truly sorry” for the travel chaos, adding that “We have some real work to do in making this right.”

Another Southwest executive issued a video apology Wednesday, highlighting new features on the company’s website where affected travelers can go to rebook flights, request refunds and submit information on missing bags.

Ryan Green, Southwest’s chief commercial officer, pledged “to do everything we can and to work day and night to repair our relationship” with passengers.

The problems began over the weekend and snowballed Monday, when Southwest called off more than 70% of its flights.

That was after the worst of the storm had passed. The airline said many pilots and flight attendants were out of position to work their flights. Leaders of unions representing Southwest pilots and flight attendants blamed antiquated crew-scheduling software and criticized company management.

Luis Hernandez, 61, left, Ruth Hernandez, with their dog Sissi wait for a ride home after their Southwest Airlines flight to Omaha, Nebraska, got cancelled at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.

Irfan Khan

Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said the airline failed to fix problems that caused a similar meltdown in October 2021.

“There is a lot of frustration because this is so preventable,” Murray said. “The airline cannot connect crews to airplanes. The airline didn’t even know where pilots were at.”

Murray said managers resorted this week to asking pilots at some airports to report to a central location, where they wrote down the names of pilots who were present and forwarded the lists to headquarters.

In an internal memo, meanwhile, Southwest’s vice president of group operations on Dec. 21 warned of a “state of operational emergency” at the airline’s hub in Denver because of a high number of employee absences, according to Bloomberg News.

Lyn Montgomery, president of the Transport Workers Union representing Southwest flight attendants, said she and other labor leaders have repeatedly told management that the airline’s scheduling technology is not good enough.

“This has been something we have seen coming,” she said. “This is a very catastrophic event.”

Buttigieg: Southwest should offer cash refunds

The airline is now drawing unwanted attention from Washington.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions, said his agency would examine the causes of Southwest’s widespread cancellations and whether the airline was meeting its legal obligations to stranded customers.

“While we all understand that you can’t control the weather, this has clearly crossed the line from what is an uncontrollable weather situation to something that is the airline’s direct responsibility,” Buttigieg told “NBC Nightly News.” He said Southwest should at least pay cash refunds for canceled flights and cover stranded passengers’ hotel and meal costs.

In Congress, the Senate Commerce Committee also promised an investigation. Two Senate Democrats called on Southwest to provide “significant” compensation for stranded travelers, saying that the airline has the money because it plans to pay $428 million in dividends next month.

@SouthwestAir so let’s get this straight. My bags get lost, and then DAMAGED, and when I try to contact you guys over the phone, for the past WEEK, all I get is two rings and the busy tone? What kind of customer service is that?
Doesn’t sound very LUV-ing or customer friendly 🤨

— Hamza Padania (@TheHamzaP) December 27, 2022

Bryce Burger and his family were supposed to be on a cruise to Mexico departing from San Diego on Dec. 24, but their flight from Denver was canceled without warning. The flight was rebooked through Burbank, California, but that flight was canceled while they sat at the gate.

“It’s horrible,” Burger said Tuesday by phone from Salt Lake City, where the family decided to drive after giving up the cruise.

The family’s luggage is still at the Denver airport, and Burger doesn’t know if he can get a refund for the cruise because the flight to California was booked separately.

At Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, travelers said they were told they won’t be able to catch another Southwest flight until Saturday, according to CBS News DFW.

Death toll rises after monster winter storm

01:57

The size and severity of the storm created havoc for many airlines, although the largest number of canceled flights Tuesday were at airports where Southwest is a major carrier, including Denver, Chicago Midway, Las Vegas, Baltimore and Dallas.

Spirit Airlines and Alaska Airlines both canceled about 10% of their flights, with much smaller cancellation percentages at American, Delta, United and JetBlue.

Consumer advocates urged Congress to adopt new regulations to protect travelers.

“While the awful weather isn’t anyone’s fault, the way travelers were treated and accommodated — or not — sits squarely on the shoulders of most of the airlines,” said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog with public interest group U.S. PIRG, in a statement.

“As federal officials examine how much of the mayhem was preventable, this catastrophe once again exposes the massive changes that are needed to better protect airline passengers.

“Oh my God, we’re getting on a plane!”

Kristie Smiley planned to return home to Los Angeles until Southwest canceled her Tuesday flight, so she waited at the Kansas City airport for her mother to pick her up. Southwest can’t put her on another plane until Sunday, New Year’s Day.

Smiley said the airline kept blaming the weather after the storm passed and didn’t tell passengers why planes couldn’t take off.

“They like acted like [Tuesday’s flight] was going to go until they started saying, ‘Oh, five more minutes. Oh, 10 more minutes.’ I’m not sure what’s up with them. It seems a little off,” she said.

Tracy Joline, left, of Tampa, Florida, works to schedule a new flight on Southwest Airlines on Dec. 27, 2022, after her prior flight was cancelled at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma, New York.

James Carbone/Newsday RM via Getty Images

Danielle Zanin vowed never to fly Southwest again after it took four days, several canceled flights and sleeping in the airport before she, her husband and their two young children got home to Illinois from Albuquerque, New Mexico. They made stops at airports in Denver and Phoenix and reached Chicago only after ditching Southwest and paying $1,400 for four one-way tickets on American Airlines.

“I remember saying, ‘Oh my God, we’re getting on a plane!’ I was honestly shocked because I thought we were stuck in airports forever,” she said.

Zanin plans to ask Southwest to be reimbursed for part of their original tickets plus the new ones on American, and extra spending on rental cars, parking, an Uber ride and food — about $2,000 in all.

“I don’t have good faith that they will do much of anything,” she said.

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Southwest Airlines flight cancellations continue to snowball

December 29, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

DALLAS (AP) — Travelers who counted on Southwest Airlines to get them home suffered another wave of canceled flights Wednesday, and pressure grew on the federal government to help customers get reimbursed for unexpected expenses they incurred because of the airline’s meltdown.

Exhausted Southwest travelers tried finding seats on other airlines or renting cars to get to their destination, but many remained stranded. The airline’s CEO said it could be next week before the flight schedule returns to normal.

Adontis Barber, a 34-year-old jazz pianist from Kansas City, Missouri, had camped out in the city’s airport since his Southwest flight was canceled Saturday, hoping to reach a New Year’s gig in Washington, D.C.

He left his airport vigil Wednesday. “I give up,” he said. “I’m starting to feel homeless.”

By early afternoon on the East Coast, about 90% of all canceled flights Wednesday in the U.S. were on Southwest, according to the FlightAware tracking service.

Other airlines recovered from ferocious winter storms that hit large swaths of the country over the weekend, but not Southwest, which scrubbed 2,500 flights Wednesday and 2,300 more on Thursday.

The Dallas airline was undone by a combination of factors including an antiquated crew-scheduling system and a network design that allows cancellations in one region to cascade throughout the country rapidly. Those weaknesses are not new — they helped cause a similar failure by Southwest in October 2021.

The U.S. Transportation Department is now investigating what happened at Southwest, which carries more passengers within the United States than any other airline. A Senate committee promises to investigate too.

In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be “back on track before next week.”

“We have some real work to do in making this right,” said Jordan, a 34-year Southwest veteran who became CEO in February. “For now, I want you to know that we are committed to that.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions, said that “meltdown” was the only word he could think of to describe this week’s events at Southwest. He noted that while cancellations across the rest of the industry declined to about 4% of scheduled flights, they remained above 60% at Southwest.

From the high rate of cancellations to customers’ inability to reach Southwest on the phone, the airline’s performance has been unacceptable, Buttigieg said. He vowed to hold the airline accountable and push it to reimburse travelers.

“They need to make sure that those stranded passengers get to where they need to go and that they are provided adequate compensation,” including for missed flights, hotels and meals, he said Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former airline executive, said the Transportation Department could force Southwest to pay refunds for all flights that were canceled for reasons within the airline’s control, such as lack of crews. He estimated that could total 6,000 cancellations affecting 1 million customers and adding up to $300 million.

Since Southwest plans to pay $428 million in shareholder dividends next month, “the numbers are not life-threatening, although brand damage has been done,” Mann said.

Some consumer advocates are skeptical the government will punish Southwest.

William McGee, a travel expert at the American Economic Liberties Project, noted that the Transportation Department fined Frontier Airlines and several foreign carriers for slow refunds early in the pandemic but didn’t touch the four biggest U.S. airlines.

“What Pete Buttigieg should do and what he will do are probably two different things,” McGee said. His group wants a change in federal law that would make it easier for states and private parties to sue airlines for harming consumers.

On its website, Southwest told customers affected by canceled or delayed flights between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2 to submit receipts. The airline said, “We will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation.”

Navy physician Lt. Cmdr. Manoj Mathew said after spending hours on hold over two days Southwest reimbursed him for the first leg of his family’s trip from Washington to Houston — they drove through terrible weather after the Dec. 23 flight was canceled. Now he is worried whether Southwest will operate the return flight Sunday.

“I’m trying to reach other airlines,” he said. “There are no flights, plus it’s very expensive for us.”

Delta Air Lines said it was capping last-minute fares in Southwest markets through the weekend, and American Airlines said it too was limiting fares in “select” cities. Neither provided figures.

Leaders of Southwest labor unions have warned for years that the airline’s crew-scheduling system, which dates to the 1990s, was not keeping up as the route map grew more complicated.

“The fact is this is not the same airline that (Southwest co-founder) Herb Kelleher built where planes went point-to-point,” Randy Barnes, president of the union that represents Southwest ground workers, said Wednesday. “If airline managers had planned better, the meltdown we’ve witnessed in recent days could have been lessened or averted.”

The other large U.S. airlines use “hub and spoke” networks in which flights radiate out from a few major or hub airports. That helps limit the reach of disruptions caused by bad weather in part of the country.

Southwest, however, has a “point-to-point” network in which planes crisscross the country during the day. This can increase the utilization and efficiency of each plane, but problems in one place can ripple across the country and leave crews trapped out of position. (Crews can be stranded at hub-and-spoke airlines too.)

Those issues don’t explain all the complaints that stranded travelers made about Southwest, including no ability to reach the airline on the phone and a lack of help with hotels and meals.

Teal Williams, a 48-year-old active-duty Army reservist from Utah, was stuck at the Denver airport with her husband and two teenage kids on Christmas Day after their flight to Des Moines, Iowa, was canceled. She said Southwest employees had no information about flights and didn’t offer food vouchers while elderly passengers sat in wheelchairs for hours and mothers ran out of formula for their infants.

“It was just imploding, and no one could tell you anything,” Williams said. The airline employees “were desperately trying to help, but you could tell they were just as clueless as everybody else… it was scary.”

Unable to find plane, train or bus seats, Williams and her family felt lucky to score a rental car. They drove 12 hours to Iowa.

___

Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Thalia Beaty in New York also contributed to this report.

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Southwest cancellations continue as airline deals with ‘meltdown’ fallout

December 29, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

(CNN) — As Southwest Airlines scrambled to get its planes back in the air and its passengers back home heading into Thursday, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has taken a sharp line with the company.

He’s pulling no punches, referring to the situation as a complete “meltdown” of the system.

“You’ve got a company here that’s got a lot of cleaning up to do,” he has said.

And while the company has previously warned that it could take days to clear the backlog of stranded people and lost luggage, one of its unions offered a ray of hope that things might be better by early as Friday.

But Thursday promises to be more of the same, with 2,356 Southwest flights already canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Once again, cancellations are almost all on Southwest; there are only 2,435 total US flights canceled for Thursday as of 5 a.m. ET.

On top of all that, there’s increasing scrutiny of what led up to this meltdown, with operations at Denver International Airport under a microscope.

‘Operational emergency’ in Denver

Southwest’s decision to enact “operational emergency” staffing procedures last week at the airport in Denver as a massive winter storm bore down hints at a tangle of factors contributing to the airline’s nation-wide operational crisis.

The Denver airport led the United States in cancellations on Wednesday and has been one of the nation’s biggest problem spots for several days.

The Southwest emergency staffing procedures in Denver included requiring a note from a doctor to verify illness after an employee calls out sick, a Southwest spokesperson told CNN Wednesday.

The spokesperson could not say whether the staffing policy remains in place or when the special rules ended.

The Washington Post cited a Southwest memo related to the operational emergency, dated December 21, in which the airline’s vice president for ground operations declared the condition was imposed because of an “unusually high number of absences” of Denver-based ramp employees, including sick calls and personal days for afternoon and evening shifts.

The operational emergency — experienced only at Denver, according to the company — is distinct from the issue the company says is to blame for the cascade of cancellations nation-wide.

Denver International Airport has announced plans to conduct after-action reviews with the airport’s three major carriers — Frontier, Southwest and United — to learn from the disruptions while the situation is still fresh.

A ray of hope?

A traveler looks at luggage in the baggage claim area inside the Southwest Airlines terminal at St. Louis Lambert International Airport on Wednesday.

Jeff Roberson/AP

Meanwhile, an official for the union representing Southwest pilots said they expect to have their flight schedules almost back to normal by the end of the work week.

Mike Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that they have been hearing that the airline is planning for a “mostly full schedule come Friday.”

“The weather, you know, was a big event that triggered it, although that’s no excuse for the lack of scheduling IT infrastructure which really caused the problem,” Santoro said.

The union official said Southwest’s scheduling infrastructure usually works well, but added this is not the first time they have seen a meltdown causing delays. “When you have these big weather events, it always seems to crash,” said Santoro.

As of 5 a.m. ET Thursday, Southwest had canceled only 39 flights for Friday, according to FlightAware.

Tough stats for Southwest this week

Travelers tag their bags at Orlando International Airport on December 28, 2022.

Paul Hennessy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Of the 2,914 Wednesday cancellations for flights departing within, to or out of the United States, some 2,510 of them were operated by Southwest, according to FlightAware. That is 86% of all canceled flights in the United States.

In all, Southwest has canceled about 15,700 flights since winter weather began disrupting air travel on December 22. (That figure includes the flights already canceled for Thursday.)

Southwest has struggled to unwind itself from the tangled string of cancellations that began with the winter storm. Union leaders say software and manual processes are used to reassign flight crews, who for safety reasons are limited in the number of hours they may work.

Southwest spokesperson Chris Perry told CNN the airline is not experiencing an issue with employees not showing up for work.

“We have not had staffing issues at any station across our operation and commend our people for the valiant work they are doing,” Perry said.

This is now a Southwest problem

Other US airlines flying in the same weather conditions have since recovered from the storm disruptions.

In fact, American Airlines and United Airlines have capped prices on some routes served by Southwest Airlines to make their flights more accessible to stranded passengers.

Southwest does not have interline agreements with other carriers that would allow its agents to rebook passengers on a different airline, leaving travelers in charge of exploring other options.

Southwest plans to fly a reduced schedule over the next few days to reposition crew and planes, airline CEO Bob Jordan said in a video released by the airline late Tuesday.

“We’re optimistic to be back on track before next week,” he said before the pilots’ union announcement.

Buttigieg says he spoke directly to Jordan on Tuesday about the thousands of flights that have been canceled this week.

“Their system really has completely melted down,” Buttigieg told Blitzer. “I made clear that our department will be holding them accountable for their responsibilities to customers, both to get them through this situation and to make sure that this can’t happen again.”

Those responsibilities include providing meal vouchers and hotel accommodations for passengers whose flights were disrupted “as a result of Southwest’s decisions and actions,” a Department of Transportation (DOT) spokesperson said.

US airlines are also required to provide cash refunds to passengers whose flights were canceled and opted not to travel, the DOT said.

Buttigieg told CNN the Department of Transportation is prepared to pursue fines against Southwest if there is evidence that the company has failed to meet its legal obligations, but he added that the department will be taking a closer look at consistent customer service problems at the airline.

The secretary said he told CEO Jordan that he expects Southwest to proactively offer refunds and expense reimbursement to affected passengers without them having to ask.

What customers should do

One travel expert cautions to proceed carefully regarding refunds.

“Southwest says ‘We will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation,’ ” points out Phil Dengler, co-founder of travel advice site The Vacationer.

“While Southwest is being vague on how much they will reimburse, I would avoid any expensive hotels or restaurants. Use Google Hotels to find nearby hotels near the airport where you are stranded.”

And he also cautions about piling up a big tab.

“Do a few Google searches such as ‘free things to do near me.’ I doubt Southwest is going to reimburse tours or other paid activities, so I would not book any expensive excursions that you cannot afford.”

Southwest CEO issues video apology

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan released an apology to stranded travelers as the beleaguered airline continues to grapple with what US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has referred to as a complete “meltdown” of the system. In all, Southwest has canceled more than 15,700 flights since winter weather began disrupting air travel on December 22.

Jordan apologized to passengers and employees in the video released on Tuesday evening.

“We’re doing everything we can to return to a normal operation, and please also hear that I am truly sorry,” Jordan said.

He said with large numbers of airplanes and flight crews “out of position” in dozens of cities, the airline decided to “significantly reduce our flying to catch up.”

While Jordan acknowledged problems with the company response, the statement suggested that he did not foresee massive changes to Southwest’s operating plans in response to the mass cancellations.

“The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well 99% of the time, but clearly we need to double-down on our already-existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what’s happening right now,” said Jordan.

What’s the hit to Southwest’s reputation?

“It is going to take a long time for Southwest Airlines to earn back public trust,” Dengler of The Vacationer said.

“While the extreme weather affected other airlines, Southwest experienced a true meltdown at the worst possible time. Many Americans have to decide on whether or not to wait it out or spend potentially thousands of dollars to get home that may or may not be fully reimbursed by Southwest.”

He noted that “some households did not even have the option to wait it out because one or multiple members had to return to work early this week. Unfortunately, that is going to be a hardship for many families, and the time lost is going to be significant in many cases.”

“A large portion of Americans only fly once per year, and they want a problem-free experience. I believe many people are going to pause when booking their next flight and they see Southwest Airlines as the cheapest option.”

CNN’s Gregory Wallace, Andy Rose, Andi Babineau, Adrienne Broaddus, Dave Alsap, Nick Valencia, David Goldman, Leslie Perrot, Carlos Suarez and Ross Levitt contributed to this story.

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Business

Southwest cancellations continue as airline deals with ‘meltdown’ fallout

December 29, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

He’s pulling no punches, referring to the situation as a complete “meltdown” of the system.

“You’ve got a company here that’s got a lot of cleaning up to do,” he has said.

But Thursday promises to be more of the same, with 2,349 Southwest flights already canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Once again, cancellations are almost all on Southwest; there are only 2,410 total US flights canceled for Thursday as of 1:40 a.m. ET.

On top of all that, there’s increasing scrutiny of what led up to this meltdown, with operations at Denver International Airport under a microscope.

‘Operational emergency’ in Denver

The Denver airport led the United States in cancellations on Wednesday and has been one of the nation’s biggest problem spots for several days.

The Southwest emergency staffing procedures in Denver included requiring a note from a doctor to verify illness after an employee calls out sick, a Southwest spokesperson told CNN Wednesday.

The spokesperson could not say whether the staffing policy remains in place or when the special rules ended.

The operational emergency — experienced only at Denver, according to the company — is distinct from the issue the company says is to blame for the cascade of cancellations nation-wide.

A ray of hope?

A traveler looks at luggage in the baggage claim area inside the Southwest Airlines terminal at St. Louis Lambert International Airport on Wednesday.

Jeff Roberson/AP

Meanwhile, an official for the union representing Southwest pilots said they expect to have their flight schedules almost back to normal by the end of the work week.

“The weather, you know, was a big event that triggered it, although that’s no excuse for the lack of scheduling IT infrastructure which really caused the problem,” Santoro said.

As of 1:40 a.m. ET Thursday, Southwest had canceled only 39 flights for Friday, according to FlightAware.

Tough stats for Southwest this week

Travelers tag their bags at Orlando International Airport on December 28, 2022.

Paul Hennessy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Of the 2,912 Wednesday cancellations for flights departing within, to or out of the United States, some 2,510 of them were operated by Southwest, according to FlightAware. That is 86% of all canceled flights in the United States.