Southwest shambles
Washington Examiner,
by
Tom Rogan
Original Article
Posted By: AltaD,
12/28/2022 11:18:11 AM
Until the Mayo Clinic starts using the Novichok nerve agent in place of anesthesia, Southwest Airlines will retain the corporate award for the most rapid and catastrophic self-destruction of its brand. (Snip) The vast majority of domestic flight cancellations are falling at Southwest's feet. Nor is this about the weather. It's about woeful mismanagement. The other domestic airlines, by and large, have recovered from the recent winter storm. But beset by decades of underinvestment in technology and evidently inadequate management, Southwest has been unable to schedule its crews or handle escalating customer service demands.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Daisymay 12/28/2022 11:37:05 AM (No. 1366218)
We have flown on SW exclusively for over 30 years and never had one problem with a delay or cancellation or even lost Luggage. That said, we never fly on a Holiday! I feel so sorry for the mess the Passengers find themselves in, many who never made it in time for Christmas with their Loved Ones. I hope SW will fire those in Charge of this mess and get their house in order. I'm betting they will be in a mess for some months to come. I hope they are back on track when we will book to fly from Orlando to Chicago Midway this summer! ( I guess that's if they're still in business then)!
11 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Bmoc 12/28/2022 11:49:46 AM (No. 1366228)
I'm with Poster 1. If I can't get there by SW, I don't fly.
Something tells me there is something else behind this story.
17 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
SALady 12/28/2022 11:59:26 AM (No. 1366239)
Many, many years of excellent and dependable service are not going to be "destroyed" by a freak winter storm and its inevitable delays and cancelations!!!!
Other than a couple of trips to Europe, we have flown SWA exclusively for decades. In several dozen trips we have taken on them, we have never had a bad experience!!! And their very friendly, helpful, and humorous flight attendants have always been a huge plus!!!
The MSM's love of putting the "gloom and doom" spin on anything (but their lie-beral protected classes) is getting really boring and predictable!!!
17 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
DVC 12/28/2022 12:08:11 PM (No. 1366245)
I ALWAYS choose SW, and they have exemplary service. I'm not going to jump on the "hating SW" bandwagon. I will continue to use SW, although in the "masking" insanity era, we just said "NO", and
drove or stayed home.
The current system of pilot 'domiciles' allows pilots to live essentially anywhere, often far from their "home base". This is a hugely appreciated lifestyle advantage for pilots, but if the weather gets bad enough to force the cancellation of a lot of flights.....some of those flights were supposed to be bringing a crew to a distant city to fly a flight. So one cancelled flight, can prevent a crew from arriving to fly a different flight, and they were then often supposed to fly a third flight, which can't happen. It's a weather cascade effect. It's just the way things work in the modern air travel situation. A wide enough bad weather system can really screw things up, and until the crews can fly to their starting point, flights can't go. It isn't as simplistic as the author thinks, and it isn't 'bad management'. It's weather.
It seems pretty unlikely that there is going to be a sudden change to requiring crews to live within some sort of a short 'driving distance' of their home bases. So, big weather events will continue to have widespread impact on airline travel, and not just SW.
Old pilot saying "Better to be on the ground, wishing you were up there, than to be up there, wishing you could get on the ground." Bad weather is not to be trifled with. Modern air transport aircraft deal with weather far better than 25 years ago, and incredibly better than 50 years ago. But flight safety is the key issue. Sometimes it just isn't safe to fly.
Unrealistic expectations of "weather doesn't ever affect airline traffic" is just that -- unrealistic.
16 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
lynngirl122 12/28/2022 12:09:16 PM (No. 1366247)
Never EVER fly on a holiday! For heaven's sake, stay home Thanksgiving and Christmas!
13 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
stevendm 12/28/2022 12:21:24 PM (No. 1366256)
While they're at it can they bring back the flight attendant's dress code from the 70's?
14 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Robert Jones 12/28/2022 12:39:29 PM (No. 1366268)
How much of this is related to the corona virus mandate, laying off pilots? How much is this related to their being woefully short of pilots and attendants?
8 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
econoclast 12/28/2022 12:47:12 PM (No. 1366273)
Clearly too much focus on DEI when hiring and not enough on competence.
7 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Hermit_Crab 12/28/2022 2:42:10 PM (No. 1366320)
I read an article yesterday saying that the real problem stemmed from their computer scheduling system, unable to handle the weather created delays... Did anyone stop to think it could have been hacked, rather than just being old and inflexible?
Plus, the Covid vaccine mandates from the Government have killed and disabled so many of their pilots and flight crews, that any other problems are exacerbated.
8 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Dodge Boy 12/28/2022 3:16:56 PM (No. 1366342)
Give SW some space. The company had a bad hair day. Every airline on the planet has had one at some point. While this is tough for SW's customers, Bob Jordan and the company know what they are doing. But I am sure former CEO Gary Kelly is providing some crisis management tips to Jordan and the team. Just understand that the msm parasites feeds on bad news like this.
My oldest son is a Captain for Frontier. He makes it clear that the meltdown that happened to SW is the top worry of Frontier's executive team every day, and for that matter, all of the other carriers worry about the same thing. Remember what happened to Delta not long ago when their reservations and operations systems crashed? A common thread in this worry is that all of the airlines early-retired too many people during the covid scam. The more junior people who took over for them simply don't know what to do when the unexpected happens. And these risks are not limited to the airline industry. My own company, before I retired, discovered what happens when too many gray-hairs are offered retirement all at the same time.
13 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
bpl40 12/28/2022 5:48:59 PM (No. 1366427)
It seems resignations will not suffice. Harakiri comes to mind.
2 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
YorkieMom 12/28/2022 7:22:23 PM (No. 1366465)
Calm down media. Mayor Pete Buttgig is on the job and will fix everything by firing everyone at SW.
4 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
HicoKid 12/28/2022 7:37:45 PM (No. 1366475)
I used to get a shoe shine at 7:00am on Mondays beside former CEO Herb Kelleherr, at Love Field. He was a real gem of a person. He told me his "top secret" in business. He said, "It's all about people." That's all he he had to say.
5 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
mifla 12/29/2022 5:26:49 AM (No. 1366623)
Southwest Airlines is still run better than our government.
2 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
ussjimmycarter 12/29/2022 6:15:11 AM (No. 1366635)
Southwest has not upgraded their Legacy systems in years! Good luck finding Cobal programmers in todays job market! Mainframes have their place when one needs to move huge amounts of data quickly! Next time the Givernment hands you a wad of cash…spend it on programmers!
1 person likes this.
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