Southwest Airlines says holiday meltdown will ‘certainly’ hit Q4 results

Southwest Airlines’ holiday meltdown will “certainly” hit its Q4 results, executives said Thursday, adding that it will take several weeks to work through affected travelers’ reimbursement requests. The systemwide chaos stranded hundreds of thousands of customers over the holiday week and drew scrutiny from Washington. The low-cost airline slashed schedules over the last several days, flying just about one-third of its planned flights, in a desperate effort to stabilize its operation and get planes and crews where they need to go. Southwest said it expects to operate a normal schedule on Friday. It’s canceled 39 flights scheduled for Friday, according to FlightAware, down from more than 2,300 on Thursday. “We have all hands on deck and tested solutions in place to support the restored operation. I’m confident, but I’m also cautious,” CEO Bob Jordan said in a staff memo Thursday. The airline also resumed selling tickets for Friday, after a pause it implemented before it stabilized its schedule, said Jordan, a more than three-decade Southwest veteran who became CEO in February. Southwest’s operation unraveled over the holiday week after brutal winter weather swept across the U.S. When most airlines had recovered at the end of last week, Southwest’s problems worsened. Executives cited challenges including overloaded internal scheduling platforms crucial to getting crews matched with flights. Executives on Thursday vowed to improve crew scheduling platforms and said that modernization efforts were already underway but noted such projects take years.<br/>