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.
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.
I read that their software makes it very difficult for crew to update their current location / status. I would design an app for their phones to check in that information.
The system thought crews were in different cities than where they actually were. And that they had flown more than they were able to due to weather conditions.
Thank you for an intelligent post.
Increasingly rare these days on FR.
You know the folks at American Airlines are loving this. There is a history between the two.