How Southwest Is Racing To Stop One other Billion Greenback Vacation Journey Meltdown
On the finish of final 12 months, between Christmas and New Years, Southwest Airways melted down – stranding round two million passengers and costing the airline round $1 billion {dollars}.
The lengthy tail occasion started in Denver the place a storm occurred, there wasn’t sufficient de-icing gear, and there weren’t sufficient rampers – who all began calling in sick. However unhealthy climate, that every one the airways had been going through, cascaded and Southwest misplaced management of their operation.
There have been too many inexperienced individuals and Southwest’s methods couldn’t hold observe of so many flight attendants within the flawed cities and people methods couldn’t rebuild so many flights as soon as planes and crew had been out of place.
I’ve had a number of reporters ask currently, do I believe Southwest is prepared for the vacations this 12 months?
- Sure, they’ve made some new investments since final 12 months.
- However principally final 12 months was such a confluence of unlikely occasions paired collectively, on the similar time, that it’s merely unlikely to reoccur this 12 months.
Southwest for its half says they’re prepared, and is outlining a ‘recreation plan’ for workers to forestall one other Christmas meltdown.
- They need to get the whole lot to ensure that first flight of the day. American calls these ‘proper begin’ flights. However that is all the time true. Delays stack, so ensure any upkeep points are dealt with in a single day.
- They’ve improved their tech (considerably, that is an ongoing course of) they usually’ve added de-icing gear in Denver, Chicago Halfway and Nashville they usually’ve added provides like heaters to assist crew work in chilly climate.
- They assume they’ve addressed the difficulty of inexperienced workers by means of coaching and reorganization.
- SkySolver rebuilds schedules however wasn’t as much as the gargantuan activity of rebuilding your entire schedule on the fly final 12 months. So that they rebuilt about 40% – 50% of it every day manually. They’ve higher instruments to trace and reassign crew to flights now, too.
Right here’s the memo:
Finally too many issues failed without delay final 12 months that they spiraled uncontrolled. Southwest must be higher positioned to get well this 12 months – however they most likely gained’t be examined the way in which they had been at Christmas 2022.
