"I don't have an apology big enough to change what you've experienced already," Sonya Lacore, vice president of inflight operations, wrote in a staff memo that was reviewed by CNBC. Southwest offered flight attendants extra pay and apologized to those crews for the chaotic holiday period when they encountered long hold times with crew scheduling services. ![]() SWAPA also said that ground operations managers in Denver had declared an "operational emergency" on Thursday, and required staff to provide doctors' notes for calling out sick. ![]() The Southwest Airlines Pilot Association, the airline's pilots' union, said 52% of pilots were rerouted on Thursday. Southwest decided to cancel more flights on Christmas Eve because crews and planes were out of position for their assignments or due for federally required rest, Watterson said. Southwest's COO Andrew Watterson outlined a host of challenges in a staff note on Saturday, including: unexpected fog in San Diego, a staffing shortage at its fuel vendor in Denver and additional overnighting aircraft at its Dallas Love Field Airport, planes positioned there to relieve staff in other cities grappling with frigid temperatures. Southwest Airlines was hit hard by the weather, canceling about a quarter of its flights from Wednesday through Saturday, according to FlightAware. Federal forecasters warned of dangerous road conditions from ice and low visibility. The Federal Aviation Administration said schedules peaked at 47,554 flights on Thursday, dropping to 30,875 on Saturday and just 27,997 on Sunday, Christmas Day.Īirlines are required to provide cash refunds to travelers who decide to scrap their trips altogether if carriers cancel their flights.įedEx and UPS warned holiday packages could arrive late due to the storms.Īirlines scrubbed about 5,600 flights on Friday alone, about a quarter of the schedule, when storms swept through cities from the Pacific Northwest to the East Coast, bringing life-threatening cold to many areas. In addition to delays, customers complained on social media about missing luggage.Īirlines and travelers were hard-pressed to find alternative flights before the holiday because planes were booked so full and schedules dropped sharply during the weekend. The bad weather and resulting flight disruptions upended the holiday of hundreds of thousands of people during what airlines expect to be one of the busiest periods since before the pandemic. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower If you catch earlier flights you're less likely to run into these delay/cancellation issues as you'll be the 1st-3rd flight of that aircraft and crew.Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit I've flown southwest 13x this year so far and I haven't yet had a cancellation, and I don't believe I've had more than one hour delay and maybe a few 30min delays. Where-as in a hub and spoke model you'll have staffing more readily available and not having to fly them to the delayed/cancelled flight, and they can "reset" more easily. This goes for aircraft as well, they don't have backup aircraft on standby at all the airports they operate from.G This why Xmas was so ba, because the model relies on crew making those connections to crew other flights. Now they need a new crew for B-D but no staff is at B. But because of delays they hit their hour cap per FAA regulation at point B. ![]() The unique problem for SW (point to point) is once pilots/steward(es) hit their hit their hour caps they can't continue on and now finding replacements means flying crew from other airports over which takes more time. So if one plane is delayed there's a cascading affect down the line for all future routes for that aircraft for that day. While southwest goes from point to point offering more direct flights. What this means is that the legacy airlines (UA, AA, Delta) have major hubs that there aircraft fly through meaning more stopovers. From a logistical standpoint, southwest operates on a point-to-point model while legacy airlines operate on a hub-and-spoke model.
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