Southwest admits summer flight struggles, pledges fixes: 'We will do better'

Southwest executives said Thursday that the airline's operations have struggled this summer as travel has roared back from pandemic lows, and said making the airline reliable again is their top priority. Southwest's on-time performance in June was just 62.4%, and stood at 67% so far in July, the company said. In the same months in summer 2019, when crowds were bigger, Southwest's on-time performance was 75.1% in June and 80.3% in July, respectively. "We need to and we will do better than that moving forward," Southwest COO Mike Van de Ven said during the airline's quarterly earnings conference call. The US DoT rankings for June and July flights won't be out until later this summer, but Southwest said it is in the middle of the pack so far in July. American Airlines had a bad June, too, but the airline cut flights in the first half of July to address the issue and says its operation is back on track. The issues go beyond Southwest's well-documented flight woes in June, first from several weather and technology glitches, and then from more bad weather and what the flight attendants union said was a high number of sick calls. Southwest executives said it is not a matter of staffing shortages, as businesses across the country are reporting, saying they were staffed appropriately when the summer began. They said they are seeing only pockets of hiring issues, mainly for ground service workers, including baggage handlers. The airline said it's the sudden surge of travel that arrived as it was "still ramping up the operation." <br/>