Southwest worked to avoid another meltdown this winter. Is it paying off?

Last year’s holiday headaches were primarily a result of Southwest Airlines and its major system meltdown. Even the airline itself is aware. In a video distributed to employees, Southwest’s COO Andrew Watterson acknowledged that last winter was a mess after the airline canceled nearly 17,000 flights over a 10-day period in December. “When we have winter operations that slow us down, and we can’t get crew out in the system, guess what happens? Well, if you don’t get out day one, you’re not out day two and day three, and it really put a stress on our crew system, and our crew network essentially fell apart,” he said in the video, referring to how crews are often scheduled on multiday trips, so flights that get canceled can cause ripples through the employee schedule for many days. But now, Southwest insists, it’s ready for whatever Mother Nature brings this winter, and customers are proceeding with cautious optimism thanks to the airline’s goodwill gestures. “The disruption we had last winter was really hard on our customers and our employees,” Watterson said during the airline’s October earnings call. “Preparing to prevent something like that from happening again was and is an imperative. Of course, the disruption was triggered by an unprecedented storm that simultaneously hit several of our most critical stations, but there were many causes, not just one, that led to it.”<br/>