Can Southwest Flights Become Available Again
After a rocky summer of flight cancellations and delays among a travel surge from pandemic lows, Southwest Airlines idea things were looking up.
The airline's executives told employees in late September that the operation had been stable since mid-August. On-fourth dimension functioning, a dismal 62% in June, was support over 80% in September.
The momentum was short-lived.
Southwest fell apart again over the weekend, canceling more than i,900 flights Saturday and Sunday. On Lord's day, a busy fall break and holiday weekend travel day, the airline axed 30% of its flights, stranding travelers across the country. Monday cancellations were a fraction of weekend levels, but Southwest still led all carriers in cancellations, with more than 350.
By Tuesday morning time, cancellations were down to 2% for the day, though still leading other domestic carriers, co-ordinate to FlightAware, which tracks both cancellations and delays.
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The airline blamed air traffic control issues and weather in Florida on Friday, saying the ripple effects put planes and employees out of place, and it had too few reserves to pick upward the slack. Southwest caters to vacationers, and Florida is a key cog in its functioning.
Southwest and its pilots union have steadfastly denied that workers walked off the job to protestation a federal vaccine mandate. (The pilots sued the airline to stop the mandate.)
"Information technology was a very difficult weekend for many of you, and I've seen speculation on the reasoning," Southwest CEO Gary Kelly told employees in his first public comments on the meltdown Mon. "The fact is the Florida weather condition on Friday and unexpected ATC issues on Friday dark resulted in delays and cancellations across our network, and it only got us behind."
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Kelly reiterated that the cancellations were not related to vaccine mandates in a Tuesday interview with CNBC.
"We look at all of our employee behaviors in terms of absenteeism ... and they're all very normal," Kelly said. "The president of our pilots marriage has been out talking to the media confirming all of that, then I remember people, again, that understand how airlines work, when you get behind, information technology just takes several days to catch up."
White House printing secretary Jen Psaki too denied allegations that vaccine mandates affected Southwest flights.
"I know there was a petty hubbub over the course of the terminal few days near Southwest Airlines," Psaki said during a Tuesday printing conference. "We now know that some of those claims were admittedly false and actually the issues were completely unrelated to vaccine mandates."
Jon Jager, an analyst with aviation data firm Cirium, said a confluence of events bedridden Southwest.
"They were just caught in a perfect storm,'' he said, citing staffing levels, weather and flight crews running out of time because of the delays and cancellations. Pilots and flight attendants are only allowed to piece of work a certain number of hours per 24-hour interval due to contract and government rules.
Southwest isn't alone in struggling during the spike in travel subsequently the COVID-19 vaccines were made widely available. American Airlines had a slew of troubles during Begetter's Twenty-four hour period weekend, and Spirit Airlines had a seven-24-hour interval cord of cancellations in late July and early August that stranded passengers and price the airline about $50 million.
But Southwest has had more frequent issues, damaging its carefully crafted reputation as a reliable airline. For months, it'southward said information technology is working on fixes. The biggest push: hiring employees. Incoming CEO Bob Hashemite kingdom of jordan says the airline is hiring 5,000 workers this fall and 8,000 next year, most of them to supersede workers who took early retirement or extended leaves during the pandemic.
Here's what nosotros know most Southwest Airlines' Oct meltdown
What happened over the weekend, and how will Southwest, which has cultivated enviable passenger loyalty in its 50 years, recover?
President and Principal Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven spoke with The states TODAY Monday afternoon to offer some answers.
Why was Southwest Airlines the just carrier slammed by the brief Florida ATC problems and weather condition?
"Florida is just a critical node in our network," Van de Ven said.
He said forty% to 50% of the airlines' planes flow through Florida nearly every day, and many crews change there.
"And then when we have a disruption, a significant disruption, in Florida, it tends to spread to our entire network," he said. "And that was the situation that happened to united states of america on Fri."
By Friday night, he said, the airline had "well over" 100 planes and crews "that weren't where they were supposed to be."
"That was the problem we were trying to solve," he said.
Was Southwest Airlines upfront about the reasons for the October meltdown?
Van de Ven said there is no show a work stoppage of whatever kind was to blame, citing the rate of sick calls and other measures the airline keeps an heart on.
"There'due south no indication in any of our data that there is anything going on nefariously with respect to any type of activeness like that," he said.
Van de Ven went out of his way to praise the airline's flight crews and other employees for treatment the weekend mess that also stranded them and left many without hotels. In 2019, for dissimilarity, Southwest sued its mechanics over a work slowdown in a high-profile spat that caught the Federal Aviation Assistants's attending.
What is Southwest Airlines doing for travelers after mass flight cancellations?
Southwest has yet to effect a public statement, on its website or elsewhere, to stranded travelers, but Van de Ven said the airline is sorry.
"We are very sorry near the impact nosotros've had on their plans," he said.
Van de Ven said the airline has been flexible with ticket changes and refunds and is issuing goodwill vouchers and compensation for other expenses, only he declined to provide specifics.
Some travelers reported waits of several hours to attain the airline over the weekend and difficultly obtaining a refund.
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Will Southwest Airlines abolish holiday flights?
Southwest, like other airlines, has responded to flight issues this year by reducing its flight schedules to try to requite it more than breathing room while staffing remains tight.
The airline cut its planned fall flying, and Van de Ven said Southwest will review the rest of this year's schedule in the next two weeks with an eye toward proactively cutting flights if necessary.
Yes, that could include peak Thanksgiving and Christmas flights, despite efforts to go along those flights intact.
The question the airline will enquire, he said: "On these summit holiday menses travel days, practice we have enough resiliency and recoverability if something unexpected happens?"
If something does happen, travelers would be notified and rebooked on other flights or offered a refund.
Longer term, the answer is more than employees and more flights, he said, so Southwest tin more than easily rebook passengers when things go awry.
"The fix actually is but trying to get Southwest Airlines to our normal level of trips and frequencies in our network, and that could have a while," Van de Ven said.
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2021/10/11/southwest-flights-canceled-airlines-holiday-flight-cuts/6091631001/
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