Regulators need to study an operational collapse like this week’s Southwest Airlines meltdown to find out what went wrong in order to prevent similar failures from happening again.
The public has a vested interest in how Southwest runs its business. The meltdown disrupted holiday celebrations for tens of thousands of families. All American taxpayers hold stakes in the game since government gave their money to Southwest.
“Southwest’s flight delays & cancellations are beyond unacceptable,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., posted on social media Wednesday night. “This is a company that got a $7 billion taxpayer bailout & will be handing out $428 million in dividends to their wealthy shareholders.”
A winter storm triggered Southwest’s problems. But days after the storm passed Southwest had only partially resumed services even as all other major airlines had returned to normal operations. Southwest flight crews, passengers and baggage remained stranded all over the country.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has vowed to hold Southwest accountable for its debacle. Passengers are entitled to payment from Southwest for reasonable expenses, including refunds for canceled flight tickets and reimbursement for meals, lodging and rental cars.
“Southwest is planning to issue a $428 million dividend next year — the company can afford to do right by the consumers it has harmed,” Sens. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a joint statement.
As government launches a thorough investigation, various elected officials and unions representing Southwest pilots and flight attendants have already publicly identified a potential reason for the meltdown. They say one reason for the collapse is because the company gave profits to shareholders instead of investing in technology that might have lessened the extent of the operational collapse.
“The house of cards has fallen,” Lyn Montgomery, president of TWU Local 556, a union that represents Southwest flight attendants, told National Public Radio.
“This is something that TWU Local 556 has told the company over the years,” Montgomery said. “The pilots union has said the same thing, that we need to invest in our IT infrastructure, that the systems we have in place cannot handle the operation that we utilize today.”
Southwest has grown because it has been successful. I rarely travel by air, but the few times I have flown over the past 20 years I booked on Southwest. I considered the airline efficient and affordable with good customer service. I found it easier than expected to make reservations and buy tickets online. All my experiences with Southwest were good.
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Critics say, however, that Southwest is still using operational systems designed for when the airline was a third of its current size in terms of number of flights, passengers moved and other measures.
Is Southwest’s meltdown a warning to other companies about the need to invest profits in improving operations and fairly compensating employees instead of redirecting wealth to shareholders?
No one knows yet the total cost of the debacle, in terms of potential lost business and permanent brand damage. The airline is among the largest carriers in America and the world.
Its meltdown is like imagining McDonald’s having to close two thirds of its restaurants nationwide for a week because of inability to get food for menu items or workers to its stores.
For perspective on the situation I reached out to Jerry Lawler of Palos Heights. Lawler became a friend after I wrote about how he retired in 1998 after working as a pilot for TWA his entire career. He is in regular contact with other pilots who are all talking this week about Southwest, he said.
“They are all saying the same thing,” Lawler told me. “The airline just did not invest in stuff you need, computerization.”
I read numerous accounts that pinpointed a staff scheduling system as a key bottleneck. Pilots, flight attendants and other had warned for years that the method of having people phone in to an operator to manually input their locations used antiquated technology from the 1990s and had to be updated.
“The phones are busy, you can only talk one at a time,” Lawler said.
One report said a pilot waited on hold for 22 hours to report his location before finally giving up without being able to talk to a person.
Employees for other airlines in similar situations can use applications on their mobile devices to input data into a system, rather than making a phone call and having to wait to talk to a human being.
“When I retired our ability to communicate with management and everybody else was already there,” Lawler said. “We had a great computerization system.”
By all accounts, Southwest pilots, flight attendants and other front line workers heroically did their best during the crisis. Videos on social media showed pilots lugging passenger bags, serving drinks and apologizing for the embarrassing breakdown.
“The sad thing is that it got this far,” Lawler said. “You have to blame it on management. They should have known better.”
Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan apologized in a video message and acknowledged that a lack of investment in operational technology over the years contributed to the meltdown.
“The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well 99% of the time, but clearly we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what’s happening right now,” Jordan said.
A man who identified himself as a Southwest pilot for more than 35 years posted an account of the situation on social media. The pilot’s union shared Larry Lonero’s post, which had more than 25,000 reactions as of Thursday afternoon.
Lonero wrote that Jordan was doing his best but he inherited a mess from his predecessor. Gary Kelly was CEO from 2004, when founder Herb Kelleher retired, until earlier this year.
“Gary was an accountant by education and his style leading Southwest Airlines became more focused on finances and less on operations,” Lonero wrote.
Kelly appointed another accountant to head operations, according to Lonero.
“This trickled down through the lower levels of leadership, as well,” he wrote.
“They all disengaged the operation, disengaged the employees and focused more on Return on Investment, stock buybacks and Wall Street.”
Southwest’s meltdown may be an example of what happens when penny pinchers cut costs and ignore employee concerns in order to serve the interests of shareholders.
“We are angry. We are embarrassed. We are sad. Like you, the traveling public, we have been let down by our own leaders,” Lonero wrote. “Herb once said the biggest threat to Southwest Airlines will come from within. Not from other airlines. What a visionary he was. I miss Herb now more than ever.”
Ted Slowik is a columnist for the Daily Southtown.
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