Southwest Airlines chief executive offers explanation for Christmas crisis

Southwest Airlines COO Andrew Watterson plans to tell the Senate Commerce Committee that the carrier did not have “enough resilience” in its operations as harsher-than-expected winter weather hit “key airports”.

Watterson is scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation during a hearing on Thursday titled “Strengthening airline operations and consumer protection” that will examine the causes and consequences of recent disruptions to air travel, including the Southwest crash in December. nearly 17,000 canceled flights.

The carrier is facing lawsuits from passengers and its own shareholders over the violation, which is being investigated by the Department of Transportation.

In an affidavit released ahead of the hearing, Watterson said the Texas-based airline had put in place a plan that included early flight cancellations “to reduce activity to an hourly rate that was in line with our tested capacity.”

However, sub-zero temperatures, strong winds and freezing rain “were worse than forecast” and “had a wide impact” on operations, especially at Denver and Chicago Midway airports.

“It became clear that because the storm simultaneously severely disrupted our Midway stations in Denver and Chicago, we did not have enough resilience in our operations for the severe impact that this winter event had on us,” Watterson said. in affidavits.

Denver and Chicago Midway are two of Southwest’s 11 crew bases where aircrew begin and end their duties. These two seats account for 25% of aircrews, Watterson said.

Watterson acknowledged that the air carrier “has struggled to keep operations at these key airports” due to a variety of factors, including the amount of de-icing equipment and related infrastructure, the impact of extreme cold on the jet bridge hydraulics and fuel for ground support equipment, and the location of gates and anti-icing areas.

He claimed that this disruption began as a weather event on 21 December but evolved into a crew planning event. However, he said the carrier’s crew planning software never stopped working, but rather was overwhelmed.

“Due to the pace and volume of crew convergence and schedule changes for several days, our crew planners have not been able to effectively respond to the state of the operation,” Watterson wrote.

As the situation escalated, “The crew schedule just couldn’t keep up with the sheer volume of changes, resulting in individual crew assignments not being updated in a timely manner,” Watterson continued.

“Due to these factors, among other things, we were not able to carry out our planned action plan during the storm,” he added.

Southwest was forced to cancel almost all flights to Denver, its largest station, between December 21 and 23. December 23rd.

Watterson admitted that the airline screwed up and, echoing the words of CEO Bob Jordan, apologized to those affected.

“Let me be clear: we screwed up. Looking back, we can say that we did not have enough resilience to winter conditions,” he said.

Watterson said the carrier has processed all refunds, returned passenger baggage and complied with most refund requests. It also gave out 25,000 Rapid Rewards points to seriously injured passengers.

However, in an affidavit, Watterson said the carrier is “intensely focused on reducing the risk of recurrence” of this type of disruption.

The chief executive noted that almost all of its planned capacity increases in 2023 will target existing markets, which “will help add depth and greater resilience by providing better re-accommodation options for customers, crew and aircraft when we have weather conditions or delays, that create irregular operations.”