Posted on 12/30/2022 11:57:54 AM PST by george76
The epic breakdown of management at Southwest Airlines over the past several days, which resulted in not just passengers, but crews and airplanes ready to fly but unable to file the requisite paperwork owing to information systems failure, will be studied in business schools for many years to come. The proximate causes of this catastrophic breakdown – antiquated computer systems for scheduling .. and partially eschewing a hub-and-spoke route structure – have been widely discussed in the media. But a few important details have largely escaped notice.
Management Information Systems (MIS)..
Southwest has avoided heavy investment in computerized MIS for decades,
...
Southwest cannot accept foreign currencies for air travel.
...
Southwest’s computers are also unable to handle a flight scheduled past midnight, necessitating a date change. For this reason, Southwest has no red-eye flights at all, keeping its flight grounded in the middle of the night.
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The biggest risk, aside from the inevitable screw-ups as new systems are implemented, will be damage to the very positive corporate culture Southwest has worked hard to sustain.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
i.e. the MBAs cheaped out.
Southwest had lower prices for years back awhile ago because they prepurchased fuel before it started skyrocketing. I guess not updating computers was another cost saver. I thought they might have been victims of ransomware and not telling anyone.
Southwest will be better and stronger. They will invest in the needed software to update their scheduling systems.
Yes, It was very bad. Yes they should have spent the 1/2 billion to update before the meltdown. But they will do it now.
24 months from now this will be a distant memory. They are a class company.
You are now free to declare bankruptcy. Its profitable routes, pilots and jets will soon be acquired by others especially Jet Blue/Spirit.
Totally agree, except I think they knock it out in 6 months.
Early in their history Southwest had a reputation for the type of people they hired, funny, outgoing, dedicated to customer service, etc..
They centralized on one type of aircraft, the Boeing 737, it was cheaper than having to service and fly different types of aircraft.
They adopted a point-to-point type of route system instead of the normal hub and spoke route system that all the other airlines use.
Southwest using this strategy was very successful but like most large companies when the original management retired, they got taken over by the MBA types that know nothing about the airline business and went away from what made them successful and it’s cost them severely.
They spent billions on new 737-800 max planes they can spend 500 million on upgrading their software.
each max cost SWA about 89 million each.
overall firm MAX order book to 271 MAX 7s and 135 MAX 8s. It still retains 226 options, bringing its overall firm orders plus options to 632 planes. This order book extends out to 2031, though the bulk of these deliveries will happen between 2022 and 2026. The MAX 7 will make up the majority of deliveries until 2026, from when Southwest expects to take more MAX 8 aircraft. Southwest’s MAX options can be exercised for either MAX 7s or MAX 8s, and with written advanced notice, Southwest can also designate firm orders as MAX 7s or MAX 8s.
Been an investor in $LUV since 1988... They will not go bankrupt. they will be better and stronger than every.
Never would have happened when Herb Kelleher was running things.
This isn’t Herb Kelleher’s Southwest Airlines.
American Airlines is hovering like a vulture.
They are going to lose a lot of DFW business to American Airlines and the other airlines based out of DFW Airport.
That’s why SW was cheap. Because they’re cheap.
People always want everything both ways.
My friend the retired Delta baggage handling management type is chortling with every one of these Southwest stories.
“crews and airplanes ready to fly but unable to file the requisite paperwork owing to information systems failure, will be studied in business schools for many years to come.”
No it won’t. This piling on on Southwest Airlines when holiday flight cancellations often occur is out of proportion. Perhaps Southwest is a convenient scapegoat right now ... or perhaps the liberals who gave the MSM their marching orders just don’t like the CEO Bob Jordan.
“Neither Bob nor Kelly grew up in an Aggie household. Bob was reared in Indiana, while Kelly’s family moved sporadically during her father’s service as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force. Leading up to college, both Bob and Kelly moved with their families to Texas and enrolled at Texas A&M to study computer science and history, respectively.
The two met each other through a college ministry group, became inseparable and married a year later. After taking a few extra semesters to finish their degrees (Kelly coined herself “the queen of victory laps”), the newlyweds graduated a year apart, had their first child while still in College Station and moved to California. Within 18 months, however, they resettled in Texas for Bob’s new job as an entry-level programmer for Southwest Airlines.”
https://www.txamfoundation.com/Fall-2019/Trailblazers.aspx
Can it recover...
https://www.frontline.news/post/vaccine-mandate-blamed-for-mass-flight-cancellations
> Been an investor in $LUV since 1988... They will not go bankrupt. they will be better and stronger than every.
Sunk cost fallacy. ;-)
“American Airlines is hovering like a vulture.”
They can’t afford it.
Why is only Southwest having these issues? It’s not piling on.
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