[PeterPrinciple]

While other airlines were able to recover from the brutal weather within a few days, Southwest continued to spiral.

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any information on WHY SW had such a hard time dealing with the weather?

[Paladin2]

Probably best to keep the crew associated with the plane as long as possible.

[TChad]

I gather this means that Southwest expects to continue in business.

[Caipirabob]

They forced vaccinations on the airlines, they forced dismissal of anyone who declined, they watched as pilots suffered from adverse effects and became to sick to fly and now the left wants to investigate why the airlines aren’t functioning at peak efficiency…

[unread]

Going by the attitude of the union worker on faux news, I have no doubt it was a “worker slowdown.”

[Organic Panic]

ALL HAIL BOOTYGAG. Savior or the air travel industry.

[peggybac]

Thank God I don’t fly any longer. Airports are like Greyhound bus terminals now. If I were rich, I’d join BAJit and use one of their planes and bypass the zoo.

[GaryCrow]

It's a typical story of a U.S. corporation. When the founder passes it on to the new generation they bring in a bunch of corporate hacks who look for "efficiencies" which basically means they cut everything to the bone to prop up the C suite bonuses. Under normal circumstances they can keep things going while operating lean but you throw in a weather event and there's no give in the system. It's like driving your car and planning to coast into the gas station on empty, it usually works until one day there's an 18 wheeler turned over in the middle of the highway and you have to detour 15 miles around, now you don't have enough gas.

One of Southwest's "efficiencies" was to delay modernizing their antiquated IT systems. The old one was paid for and it always worked "good enough", until everything melted down and it wasn't sufficient. Basically they tried operating so cheap in the pursuit of profits that it bit them in the ass big time. Lots of upper management needs to be shown the door, there really isn't any excuse for what happened other than poor management.

[lurk]

Southwest’s main brain computer system suffered the blue screen of death. All flight crews and planes were frozen where they were.
The company did not know where anybody was.

They should have had an emergency system and protocol in place ready to operate.