When the coronavirus pandemic ground the transportation industry to a screeching halt in early 2020, Southwest Airlines received more than $7 billion from the US government in aid to help pay employees and keep the systems from buckling.
But its system had two major meltdowns in the past 18 months, including Christmas week’s massive system failure, the likes of which the aviation industry has never seen.
However, analysts say the billions of taxpayers dollars could not have been directed to solve the particular problems that caused Southwest’s service meltdown — the mess was decades in the making.
Federal aid came with terms and conditions: The airlines had to use the funds exclusively to continue paying wages, salaries and benefits to employees; and, for specific periods of time, they couldn’t conduct furloughs or layoffs; issue dividends or stock buybacks; or increase pay for executives. By the carriers and airline unions’ accounts, the program ultimately was a success.
The scheduling technology wasn’t updated since the 1990s: The technology hasn’t changed much, and employees were having these issues for the past 20 months, Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association told CNN. “We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”
Southwest’s “point-to-point” model also didn’t help: The operational approach involves planes flying consecutive routes, picking up crews at those locations and relying on short turnaround times. “They just kind of build on from city to city to city, and when that gets disrupted, it’s very difficult to get the operations flowing smoothly again,” said Jeff Windau, senior equity analyst of equity research for Edward Jones.
Staffing issues contributed to the recent outages: In October 2021, Southwest had 7,000 fewer employees than it did pre-pandemic, according to Transportation Department data. The airline cited “inadequate staffing” following the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights during the Indigenous Peoples Day/Columbus Day weekend.
CNN’s Ted Barrett, Lauren Fox, David Goldman, and Chris Isidore contributed to this report.
