Associated Incidents
When Southwest Airlines Co. reassigns crews after flight disruptions, it typically relies on a system called SkySolver. This Christmas, SkySolver not only didn’t solve much, it also helped create the worst industry meltdown in recent memory.
Airline executives and labor leaders point to inadequate technology systems, in particular SkySolver, as one reason why a brutal winter storm turned into a debacle. SkySolver was overwhelmed by the scale of the task of sorting out which pilots and flight attendants could work which flights, Southwest executives said. Crew schedulers instead had to comb through records by hand.
The airline has said SkySolver works well during a more typical disruption and had helped it manage recent hurricanes and snowstorms. But the scale of this past week’s storm, coupled with a network that still hasn’t been fully restored in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, gummed things up. Even as it tried to solve one set of problems, new ones would emerge.
Crews and planes were out of place. Phone lines jammed up, and Southwest pilots and flight attendants trying to get assignments couldn’t get through to the scheduling department. Some shared screenshots on social media that showed hold times of eight hours or more—which meant they could wait a full workday for instructions while flights were stuck for the lack of a crew. The airline was scrambling just to figure out where its crew members were located, union leaders said.
“There just was not enough time in the day for them to work through the manual solutions,” Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson said in an interview.
Southwest prides itself on a laid-back culture and exceptional customer service. Now that reputation has been badly damaged. It canceled more than 13,000 flights since Thursday, stranded passengers and bags across the country, snarled Southwest’s crew members and drew fire from federal officials. Chief Executive Officer Bob Jordan, who has been in the job for less than a year, publicly apologized. Mr. Watterson has been his job since October. Both are longtime company executives.
The storm hit cities like Denver and Chicago that are at the heart of Southwest’s operation, and where many of its employees are based. To be sure, many of the challenges Southwest faced were similar to those encountered by other airlines: Ground equipment and jet bridges froze, fuel congealed due to the subfreezing temperatures and staff needed to rotate inside more frequently. But rival airlines recovered more rapidly.
In the wake of the mess, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and federal lawmakers have stepped up calls for more stringent consumer protection measures. Southwest’s shares fell nearly 6% Tuesday, outstripping declines for other airlines. Citigroup Inc. analysts said that fourth-quarter earnings for the airline could take a 3% to 5% hit.
“We’ve talked a little over the last year about the need to modernize the operation and invest,” Mr. Jordan wrote Monday in a memo to employees. “This is why.”
In a November meeting with reporters, the CEO noted the airline had expanded faster than its technology. “I do think the scale and the growth of the airline got ahead of the tools that we have,” he said.
This isn’t the first time that a disruption has ballooned at Southwest, and the carrier’s struggle to put its operations back together shows how its increasingly complicated network needs a better technology foundation. Union leaders have criticized the airline for being too slow to make changes, and Southwest executives have said their systems are being updated.
Southwest’s pilots union for years complained that SkySolver often spits out fixes that don’t make much sense, sending crews on circuitous journeys around the country as passengers to meet flights, a practice known as “deadheading.”
In one example during the storm, the system assigned a pilot to deadhead on a flight from Baltimore to Manchester, N.H., and then back to Baltimore the next day, without ever flying a plane, according to Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association labor union.
“The company has had its head buried in the sand when it comes to its operational processes and IT,” Mr. Murray wrote in a message to members Monday.
Southwest had reasons to be confident heading into the Christmas travel week. Over Thanksgiving, executives said, it canceled only about 70 flights out of 26,000. Its staffing had rebounded above prepandemic levels, thanks to aggressive hiring, and bookings looked strong. The airline announced plans to resume paying investors a dividend, the first major U.S. airline to do so.
Airlines were expecting the week leading up to Christmas to be one of the busiest since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, with millions of passengers projected to pass through airports. Southwest executives said they believed they were prepared to handle the crush of holiday travelers.
“We were ready,” Mr. Jordan said in an interview the day after Christmas. “We had a terrific Thanksgiving week, we had a terrific beginning of December, until the storm hit.”
The winter storm that swept across the country complicated travel for the entire industry. But as the weather challenges receded, Southwest remained in a bind. It had planes. It had pilots and flight attendants available to work. Matching them up proved difficult.
At the airline’s Dallas headquarters, executives said they worked through the weekend in rooms that are used for emergencies. Former crew schedulers were called in to help manage the phone call volumes. Someone hunted down an open pizza place that could take a large order on Christmas Day.
Several times, the airline’s leaders believed they’d gotten control of the problem, only to encounter some new roadblock that required them to cancel more flights, undoing the carefully set crew plans.
As of Sunday afternoon, Southwest executives thought they might have gotten through the worst of it. “We saw the light in the tunnel,” Mr. Watterson said.
Mr. Jordan said he believed if Southwest could power through a few tough days, things would improve—its usual playbook. This time, problems kept multiplying as the airline kept flying. “The key to recovery is typically, keep operating,” he said. “Typically after day three, day four you’re in pretty decent shape. We didn’t see that this time, though.”
Operations at several key airports were in danger of becoming gridlocked. That can occur when arriving flights compete for space with those held up at gates waiting for crews. To avoid those snarls, Southwest canceled more flights, starting the process all over again.
By Monday, Southwest executives realized they needed a full reboot. In an effort to get pilots, flight attendants and planes into position, the airline took more draconian measures. It canceled about two-thirds of its planned flights for multiple days, and locked up seat inventory on its website so customers couldn’t buy tickets for a flight that might ultimately be canceled.
Executives have said in recent days that operations are stabilizing. Chief Operating Officer Mr. Watterson told employees in a Tuesday night update that he’s hopeful the airline will be able to ramp back up again on Friday.
“Lots can disrupt it,” Mr. Watterson said. “But right now as we sit, I’m much more confident than I have been since the storm started.”
Unlike many rival airlines, Southwest’s planes generally hop from one city to another, rather than orbiting a major hub. That approach lets Southwest maximize use of its planes and crew, but the daisy chain structure also makes its network more delicate—problems in one corner of the country can be difficult to contain, said Samuel Engel, senior vice president of aviation at consulting firm ICF International Inc.
“In some ways, what makes Southwest special also makes it more vulnerable,” Mr. Engel said.
Upgrading Southwest’s technology has been a yearslong endeavor. Before it grew from a small player to a national and then international airline, Southwest didn’t need the same kinds of commercial platforms that rivals used, and developed many of its own systems instead. As Southwest grew and took on more complicated operations, such as flying outside the U.S., that has changed. SkySolver, an off-the-shelf piece of software that Southwest has customized and updated, was nearing the end of its life, the airline said.
Much of the recent investment has focused on consumer-related tools such as a $500 million reservation system the airline switched to in 2017. It has also turned its attention to the systems it uses in its operations. It has a new suite of tech tools for maintenance. Ramp workers now carry tablets and communicate electronically, rather than sending handwritten messages with important data on luggage and cargo weight.
The airline’s pilots and flight attendants have said outdated technology is part of the reason Southwest has struggled to rebound after upsets. Last year, a severe storm and an air-traffic control slowdown in Florida set off a chain reaction that rippled through Southwest’s network for several days. The airline canceled flights in a disruption that ended up costing $75 million.
The Christmas disruption has been “the operational failure of all failures,” Lyn Montgomery, president of the union that represents Southwest’s flight attendants, wrote in a message to its members on Wednesday.
“It is the complete failure of Southwest Airlines’ executive leadership. It is their decision to continue to expand and grow without the technology needed to handle it,” she wrote.
Executives have acknowledged the shortcoming in the airline’s crew scheduling tools, and have said work was already under way to build or buy replacements.
“We can’t be our size and scope and have a lack of tools,” Mr. Jordan told employees Monday night.