![]() ![]() "If airline managers had planned better, the meltdown we’ve witnessed in recent days could have been lessened or averted," Barnes added. "Although it can be complicated, especially during the holiday season, we need to consider better spacing of flights during extreme weather events in the bitter cold of winter – as well as the extreme heat of summer." Many of our people have been forced to work 16-hour or 18-hour days during this holiday season," the union leader said in a statement, noting that some workers got frostbite this past week. Randy Barnes, president of TWU Local 555, which represents Southwest ground workers, says the company needs to invest in its employees, too. "This will probably take a year or two to resolve from a systems standpoint," he said. Unfortunately, those changes won't happen overnight, according to Mann. The airline said Thursday, "We have much work ahead of us, including investing in new solutions to manage wide-scale disruptions." "These are things that have made our job really difficult," she said. In 2018, TWU Local 556 told executive management that "flight attendants were very, very tired and we were struggling to get the basics," such as a meal or getting into hotel rooms in a timely manner, according to Montgomery. That year, a brownout internally dubbed Technado left crews stranded for days after a faulty router caused a 12-hour-long system outage. "This (meltdown) isn't new but it's certainly the most catastrophic of this nature that we've seen," she said, adding that "'micro-meltdowns' happen in between."Īs far back as 2016, she said flight attendants have been waiting for policy changes. Montgomery pointed out how Southwest expanded its international flights and has destination language-speaking staff, "yet the technology hasn't really kept up" with that growth. "When they have a problem, they have a bigger problem," he said. Mann agreed that the Southwest's speedy growth, especially as it ramped up services when travel picked up again in 2021. The airline is the nation's largest carrier in terms of daily flights and domestic passengers. ".this problem began many years ago when the complexity of our network outgrew its ability to withstand meteorological and technological disruptions." "For more than a decade, leadership shortcomings in adapting, innovating, and safeguarding our operations have led to repeated system disruptions, countless disappointed passengers, and millions in lost profits," Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said in a statement. Southwest flight attendants and pilots say they've been flagging issues for years. ".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. Mann and a former airline executive for airlines like American and TWA. Other airlines that bounced back typically use cloud- or internet-based tools that make them more robust and agile when big disruptions hit, according to independent travel industry analyst Robert Mann, president of R.W. "That's like trying to beat somebody who's got a MacBook Pro and you've got an abacus," Tajer said. Southwest scaled back operations to about a third of daily flights through Thursday to give itself time to "catch up." In the meantime, the airline said it had to turn to the tedious and time-intensive task of manually scheduling crews. With so many pieces out of place, the airline told USA TODAY, "our tools have struggled to place flight crews and aircraft in the right places." 'There's nothing we can do': Southwest woes leave thousands of bags lost and left in piles at airports 'They had beaten me down': How Southwest's mass flight cancellations forced passengers to improvise USA TODAY reached out to Southwest for comment on specific criticisms and was redirected to the airline's existing recovery effort statements. Southwest has blamed overstretched technology for its inability to bounce back from extreme winter weather over the holidays, but employees say that's not the only problem and industry experts say Southwest isn't alone. "We've watched this happen across the industry over the summer, two summers now, where it isn't the storm that Mother Nature delivers that creates the havoc, it's the storm of management teams not being able to deal with the recovery after the storm," said Dennis Tajer, a longtime American Airlines pilot and spokesperson for their pilots union, Allied Pilots Association. 29, according to FlightAware, which tracks air traffic in real time. Southwest may be back on track for now, but it may only be a matter of time before another airline – and its travelers – experience similar chaos. The airline canceled more than 15,000 flights between Dec.
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