Posted on 12/29/2022 11:03:39 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
Progressives are taking aim at Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg over the Southwest airlines holiday travel fiasco that continues to cause mass delays and cancellations across the country, urging further scrutiny of the department’s practices.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a leading left-wing lawmaker on Capitol Hill, took to Twitter on Thursday to question the Transportation Department’s handling of the debacle that left travelers deserted and frenzied and administration officials scrambling.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
-PJ
Good Morning America had an interview with ButtyG about this.
Looks like they centered and focused the camera on his lips.
Very darn gross.
I’ve noticed that black Democrats are not fans of Buttigieg - his appeal as a younger gay man is restricted to white Democrats. His black critics point out (rightly) that he’s a small town mayor with no accomplishments who is getting national attention for nothing besides the fact that he’s gay.
They should take aim at themselves if they voted for Bidet.
Because Bidet selected ButtGigg only because he is a butt gigger.
They don’t like his job performance.
Or what he’s doing as Transportation Secretary, either..................
Yes.
And finding out he’s a WEF guy made it make more sense why him.
IOW, he sucks at both........................
Is his attack on SWA political payback for something they did or didn’t do for his last campaign?
Handled with the same expertise that the shipping issue was handled.
He got the job to push the EV agenda and anyone who disagreed was labeled a homophobe. AT NO TIME did anyone at WestExec think he would have to handle a real crisis!
Hard to believe the Transportation Secretary doesn’t roll up his sleeves and re-program a private company’s internal management software in three days.
“I’m going to campaign for the nationalization of the railroads,” said Kip Chalmers, glaring defiantly at a small, gray man who looked at him without interest. “That’s going to be my platform plank. I’ve got to have a platform plank. I don’t like Jim Taggart. He looks like a soft-boiled clam. To hell with the railroads! It’s time we took them over.” -- "Atlas Shrugged", Ayn Rand
I have done a bit of reading on how/why this happened and it has nothing to do with Mayor Pete other than his grandstanding huffing and puffing.
It is a complex system that was dealing with a lot of stresses and systemic problems.
I have asked a few people and answers vary, but a few things worth mentioning:
According to some, Southwest has not yet replaced the crew they lost from “Covid” - illness, vaccines, and mandates. Approximately 7-10% according to industry media were lost and it sounds like they still have a crew shortage.
Southwest has a crappy automated crew software program and this was quickly overwhelmed due to the weather cancellations and delays. According to some first hand reports it was incapable of reassigning crew that could still fly (and stewards) to another flight. Some of this is also due to federal regulations on crew/time limits.
Southwest also has pretty tight layovers at many of their hubs (in my experience) so when there are lots of cancellations/delays due to weather or other causes they tend to get more jammed up. It sounded like many (if not most) flights were delayed at many airports.
The regulatory restrictions in the industry often cause problems during the peak travel season when pilots could likely do another flight per cycle. It would be nice if they could waive this for peak travel as it limits the crew cycles for the airlines at the worst time. The government has made the whole process so cumbersome that your city bus driver can put more hours behind the wheel (far more stressful in my opinion) than a pilot can put in the cockpit with breaks.
Southwest will have to live with the consequences of this and anyone who thinks Mayor Pete will “fix it” is dreaming. He does love a camera though!
The government will probably fine Southwest for some perceived violation of “their rules”, bluster at hearings, and I doubt much gets fixed.
It sounds like it was a cascade of crap at the worst possible moment.
Anyone have any other inside skinny on this?
I fly Southwest frequently and am usually pretty happy with them.
“...re-program a private company’s internal management software...”
Maybe somebody did do that.
Well,we can thank Hillary for something. The program was black,woman,homosexual. They were going to slowly roll out Buttigieg like they did OBama.
I’m not certain but I’m pretty sure the weather probably stressed all air travel not using large metropolitin hased air terminals, and Butterygig needs to double down on the polar vortex’s (and all the other stupid storm descripters in use) coming out of Canada.
This won’t be limited to Southwest, they will all be affected. There is a massive shortage of pilots in the US, There are not enough students to make a dent in it, even if there were enough students, there are NO flight instructors to teach them. most people become instructors so they can build hours to get into the airlines, they all gone already and there are NO replacements.
There are still thousands of Jumbo Jets sitting in airports and fields next to airports that have been in mothballs for 2 years now. We look at about 150 in Victorville Airport every week or two when we fly to my other house. It will take Many Years to fix the pilot shortage, if it can be fixed at all.
Yes, I have my own plane and fly it regularly, and am good friends with someone involved with the FAA and various other agencies trying to figure out what to do about this problem.
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