TProphet1/ A lot of people have been asking for an explainer on what is going on with Southwest Airlines and the massive meltdown that occurred. Hi, I'm TProphet. I write the Seat 31B travel blog (https://www.seat31b.com) and closely follow the airline industry. More importantly, I have a friend whom Southwest abandoned in Las Vegas until New Year's (along with his cat), and there was literally nothing I could do for him. Ready? Let's dive in.
2/ Southwest is the largest domestic carrier in the US. They fly to 23 of the top 25 airports. When it suits them they say "we're a small carrier serving small places, the rules shouldn't really apply to us" (whether it's safety or anything else) but the reality is that they're a major airline. They should be considered as such, and treated accordingly.
3/ Southwest is highly unusual. Their IT is almost entirely homegrown, with software they built themselves. It's creaky and antiquated - you'll observe this if you watch their schedules. They're irregularly and manually loaded into the system.
The majority of airlines use standardized reservations systems like Sabre, Amadeus, etc. which integrate well with other standardized tools. Not Southwest, who only supports limited integrations in specific circumstances.
4/ Other airlines (apart from Southwest, Spirit, Frontier and a couple others like Avelo and Breeze) have relationships with airport hotels so they can issue vouchers to stranded passengers and crew. They also work with each other in a system called "interlining" where they take each other's passengers to avoid total systemic meltdowns like these. For example, when Delta melted down in the past, American and United have bailed them out (and vice-versa).
5/ In this case, it's the week between Christmas and New Year, and there are no seats on other airlines to book their passengers into. Even if there were, there is no interline agreement. So Southwest basically says "see you next week" and dumps you wherever they left you.
6/ So, about aircraft positioning and crew scheduling - Southwest is essentially a short and medium haul airline. They mostly don't do long haul services except for Hawaii.
Southwest turns aircraft quickly, in less than 30 minutes. They have higher aircraft utilization than any other major US airline. They often run their crews on tight loops where they're out from home and back the same day so they can save money on accommodating crews who overnight away from their home base.
7/ Yeah, about that. So when Southwest melted down, they didn't have nearly the number of rooms reserved that they needed for their own crew, and it was Christmas so hotels were full. Crews often did not get rooms. They just got dumped like passengers at airports. At least there are crew break rooms at most airports, but it's not very comfortable.
Major airlines usually have enough hotel relationships to be able to work something out (American has had some issues too) but Southwest does not.
8/ Southwest now has a problem where they need to figure out where all their crews are, and their planes are, and basically redo their entire crew and aircraft scheduling plan for the whole airline. The only real way they have to do this, because of the way they operate, is to stop for an entire day and set to work inventorying their assets and crews and then build out entirely new trips for everyone.
9/ However, they were just really mean to everyone who works for them. They also effectively required employees to come to work sick, making others sick just before they're most needed to recover the operation. Ben Schlappig wrote an article that covers the details here, so check it out: https://onemileatatime.com/news/southwest-airlines-meltdown-denver/
10/ Anyway, how does Southwest fix this? Just like in #infosec, every time there is a high profile problem, there is a vendor promising to magically fix everything with AI. Unfortunately, just like in #infosec, the problem space is very complicated and AI is not good at solving most of these problems.
11/ One way they could handle it is already proven, it's just expensive: holding crews and aircraft in reserve to recover from irregular operations. Qantas successfully does this.
A week ago, Qantas had an A380 unexpectedly land in Azerbaijan.
They thought there might be a fire in the cargo bay so they landed in Baku. It turned out there was a real problem with the aircraft and it couldn't be promptly repaired in Azerbaijan, a country which doesn't frequently see A380s. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/24/qantas-sends-rescue-flight-to-azerbaijan-after-stranded-passengers-left-in-the-dark
12/ Because Qantas plans ahead for emergencies, and they absorb the expense of doing so, they're able to recover their operation. And to be fair, it's not just Southwest who does their route planning this way. You see the same sort of problems with Flair Airlines in Canada. They're an extreme example but fairly representative. Flair serves 34 destinations with 24 aircraft. You can imagine the follow-on impact if any flight, on any leg, has a problem.
13/ This holiday season could have worked out really well for Southwest. They did their route planning the same way that American companies do supply chain planning: "just in time" with no slack or contingency planning. If it all melts down, they dump the problem on their customers. Southwest, after all, legally has no responsibility to anyone except for their shareholders. They are covered by their Contract of Carriage and US Department of Transportation rules (which are lasseiz-faire at best).
14/ You didn't get home for Christmas? You got stranded in Las Vegas for a week? Well, dear consumer, Southwest won't help you, the government won't help you, nobody will compensate you for the losses you suffer, and you also can't sue because the federal government has given airlines a liability shield along with endless taxpayer bailouts. If you don't like it, you're looking at one middle finger from the federal government, and another from Southwest.
15/ One last piece of airline trivia before I leave you all to digest this thread. American Airlines cancelled less than 1% of its schedule yesterday. Southwest cancelled over 70% of its schedule.
Southwest will likely (successfully) claim that under the Contract of Carriage, they do not have to pay for stranded passengers' hotels. Keep this in mind any time that politicians show up saying that every problem will be fixed with tort reform to keep evil class action lawyers from driving up costs.
Manoj Kasichainula@tprophet Sec. Pete Buttigieg is claiming the government will hold Southwest to paying for hotels and other such things: https://youtu.be/rWP6KmTg9iQ?t=116 . I hope for the best.
Buttigieg calls for accountability as Southwest cancellation 'meltdown' worsens
@headmold Mayor Pete is very good at debating Fox News hosts but he seems like a very bad and ineffective Secretary of Transportation so far. He needs to decide whether he wants to do his job, or run for President.
yenWhat has he and the DOT done wrong? A few months ago, the DOT was creative and proactive in getting airlines to *voluntarily* up their commitments on compensation if flights were delayed or cancelled due to factors within their control (rather than just waiting around until new regulations are proposed and approved).
And, in this situation, he quickly stepped in and firmly said that, weather notwithstanding, this was clearly a case of Southwest royally messing up those factors that are under their control.
That judgment, together with DOT's earlier action to get those commitments from the airline, now forms the basis for claims, and for action by the DOT.
indriAlso important that SWA didn't object against that assessment and have at least promised to follow up with customer service. Whatever they get done in the end, it will be difficult for their lawyers to later try to weasel out of those commitments.
Does he have the authority to do that, though?That sounds like the job of Congress. (Also, seems to me China has a very different system of government, where power vests at the top, with basically one-party rule, and the same party in power for a long time -- the governance options, and strategies/tactics, are different in such an environment.)
@osyen @indri @headmold I'm well aware of the differences in governance structures between the US and China. I lived in Beijing for 3 years!
The Secretary of Transportation absolutely has the authority to define an agency strategy, and align efforts around that. It's an executive branch agency. Congress controls the budget, that's it. The budget is influenced by the strategy.
Leaders lead. There are no excuses for inaction here, apart from spending too much time on Fox News.
He can have his personal vision of a longterm strategy (and I'm quite sure he does), but Congress can and does set their own priorities both by laws defining what DOT can and can't do and by tying the budget to specific conditions.
And that's before state rights come into play. DOT couldn't even propose that state DOTs maybe think about prioritizing repairing existing roads over building new ones without Republicans having a fit.
He's been using his time in the media, including on Fox, to carefully introduce some new ideas. Like designing roads around all kinds of transportation instead of just cars. Or thinking about equity when planning transportation projects. The reception is decidedly mixed, with some wild attacks not just from the right.
Even if they had the authority, DOT can't just propose a strategy people aren't ready for yet.
I'd say really passionate, gifted members of Congress have more chance to develop a longterm strategy than any administration. In a safe seat they might have decades to do so. Rep. DeFazio has worked for a long time on changing transportation and got lots of his ideas implemented in the IIJA.
But in the end you need to persuade a majority to follow you. POTUS or even Buttigieg might have a louder megaphone, but 4 years are very little time to change minds.
The DOT does have a clear vision for transportation. I don't want to sound defensive of him, but that's why many support him. He has clear values, vision and philosophy, which are articulated through conferences, meetings, town halls and interviews, not just with media, but with local leaders, students, apprentices, unions, advocacy groups, business leaders, community leaders, etc. and in congressional oversight sessions (btw, watching these sessions are quite illuminating). And expressed concretely through the directions set for the discretionary funds awarded directly by the DOT. (The DOT can't do much about a huge part of the budget, i.e. the formula funds going to states, except through the power of example, persuasion, education, awareness, reason/evidence.)
What I wanted to say earlier was that concrete, long-term plans of the kind done in some countries are not something that could be done at the executive level. Because the executive does not structurally have that kind of authority. The House has already indicated that they are going to go after the vision and priorities set by the DOT in awarding the discretionary funds. Maybe that scrutiny will allow more people to learn about the work of the DOT beyond the Fox News appearances.
More about the DOT's strategic plan:
https://www.transportation.gov/dot-strategic-plan
More about the DOT's grant programmes:
https://www.transportation.gov/grants