Southwest says it plans to restore normal flight schedule Friday
Southwest Airlines, caught in a vexing tangle of misplaced staff and technical problems since last week’s winter storm, said Thursday that it planned to return to normal operations on Friday “with minimal disruptions.” Over its five-decade history, Southwest has cultivated a reputation for inexpensive tickets, reliable customer service and flight crews with a sense of humor. But the company’s meltdown stranded thousands of travelers, bewildered employees and put its executives on the defensive, possibly doing damage to Southwest’s brand that could take years to repair. More than 2,300 of Southwest’s flights were canceled on Thursday, or about 58% of the flights that it had scheduled for the day. By contrast, the airline had canceled just 39 flights scheduled for Friday as of Thursday afternoon, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. “We know even our deepest apologies — to our customers, to our employees and to all affected through this disruption — only go so far,” the company said Thursday. Southwest’s problems started with a severe winter storm that disrupted every airline in the busy travel days before Christmas. But the company did not quickly bounce back like the rest of the industry, in large part because of technological shortcomings. In a call with journalists on Thursday, Southwest’s executives said they would learn from the debacle, though they stopped short of committing to a timeline for fixing the airline’s computer systems so that they can withstand large-scale weather disruptions. The company said the scheduling systems that match pilots and attendants to flights had become overwhelmed by the volume of changes that Southwest needed to make after frigid weather around Christmas forced it to begin delaying and canceling flights. That left it unable to quickly restart flights when the weather improved because it could not get crews to where its planes were. Southwest’s problems were compounded by its point-to-point system, in which planes do not regularly return to large hub airports — a contrast with other large airlines. Southwest said it had marshaled a “volunteer army” of more than 1,000 corporate employees to manually schedule crews.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2022-12-30/unaligned/southwest-says-it-plans-to-restore-normal-flight-schedule-friday
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Southwest says it plans to restore normal flight schedule Friday
Southwest Airlines, caught in a vexing tangle of misplaced staff and technical problems since last week’s winter storm, said Thursday that it planned to return to normal operations on Friday “with minimal disruptions.” Over its five-decade history, Southwest has cultivated a reputation for inexpensive tickets, reliable customer service and flight crews with a sense of humor. But the company’s meltdown stranded thousands of travelers, bewildered employees and put its executives on the defensive, possibly doing damage to Southwest’s brand that could take years to repair. More than 2,300 of Southwest’s flights were canceled on Thursday, or about 58% of the flights that it had scheduled for the day. By contrast, the airline had canceled just 39 flights scheduled for Friday as of Thursday afternoon, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. “We know even our deepest apologies — to our customers, to our employees and to all affected through this disruption — only go so far,” the company said Thursday. Southwest’s problems started with a severe winter storm that disrupted every airline in the busy travel days before Christmas. But the company did not quickly bounce back like the rest of the industry, in large part because of technological shortcomings. In a call with journalists on Thursday, Southwest’s executives said they would learn from the debacle, though they stopped short of committing to a timeline for fixing the airline’s computer systems so that they can withstand large-scale weather disruptions. The company said the scheduling systems that match pilots and attendants to flights had become overwhelmed by the volume of changes that Southwest needed to make after frigid weather around Christmas forced it to begin delaying and canceling flights. That left it unable to quickly restart flights when the weather improved because it could not get crews to where its planes were. Southwest’s problems were compounded by its point-to-point system, in which planes do not regularly return to large hub airports — a contrast with other large airlines. Southwest said it had marshaled a “volunteer army” of more than 1,000 corporate employees to manually schedule crews.<br/>
