Andrew Waterson, Southwest Airlines’ chief operating officer, told lawmakers Thursday that operational failures have caused the holiday travel disaster that has led to more than 16,000 flight cancellations Leaving millions of passengers stranded.
“Let me be clear. We got it wrong,” Watterson told the US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee at a hearing Thursday. “In hindsight, we did not have enough operational flexibility in the winter.”
Meltdown broke out on vacation trip Anger among clients As well as investigations from legislators and transit regulators. In some cases, travelers missed their weddings, were cut off from essential medications and were unable to retrieve belongings, such as car seats and winter coats.
Senator Tammy Duckworth said at the hearing, “Imagine you’re going to be wearing coats in Chicago in December. It’s dangerous. And so is putting young children in a car without a car kit. It’s actually illegal.”
The airline has since collected all customers with their personal belongings, except for 200 items of luggage without identifying information, Watterson said.
Watterson described a series of escalating problems, beginning with a winter storm that was worse than they had expected and exacerbated by operational shortfalls.
“It became clear that with the storm severely disrupting Denver and Chicago Midway stations concurrently, we did not have enough flexibility in our operation for the severe impact this winter event had on us,” Waterson said.
Southwest CEO Bob Joran was not present at the hearing.
2 million passengers
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, noted at the hearing that an estimated two million passengers were affected by the flight chaos, with many unable to reach customer service representatives at Southwest in a timely manner.
Typical customer service response time at Southwest is between three and nine minutes, Watterson said. But he demurred when pressed to ensure passengers would be able to contact a representative in what Duckworth called a “reasonable amount of time” in the event of another major delay.
“There weren’t a number of people we could have assigned to handle all the calls because of the amount of disruption,” Waterson said.
He added, “An apology alone, no matter how sincere or how often it is said, will not be enough to make things right.”
The Southwest executive said the company plans to invest $1.3 billion — 25% more than it spent in 2019 — in upgrading and maintaining computer systems this year, and that it has already refunded “hundreds of millions” of dollars to travelers.
More than 284,000 passengers have filed compensation claims. Watterson said the airline has fulfilled all but the approximately 10,700 claims, which were filed only recently. He has 30 days to process the payments, according to DOT rules.
Crew scheduling errors
The company had to cancel nearly all flights out of Denver, the airport from which it has the most flights, from the evening of December 21 through December 23, and also at Chicago Midway, its second-largest airport, from December 22 through December 23. .
But Waterson said that because the company’s flight crews were assigned three workdays, many flight crews in Denver and Chicago were unable to complete their shifts, leaving “later flights in their schedule exposed.”
“With such a high percentage of flight cancellations, for so long, in Denver and Chicago in particular, Southwest Airlines’ crew network is under severe stress as we go into December 24,” he added.
Travel disruptions contributed to a $220 million fourth-quarter loss for Southwest, and could also hurt the company’s first-quarter results.
Meanwhile, a group of senators want Passenger protection laws After the holiday flights from Southwest and others are canceled, which will force airlines to compensate travelers during delays and cancellations caused by airlines.
“bundled with adhesive tape”
Capt. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, also testified at the hearing. He described the tanker in his prepared remarks as “a complex operation held together with duct tape and tie wires,” and told lawmakers that Southwest had lost operational control and could not monitor the whereabouts of pilots, aircraft and crew.
“It was a fiasco, epically, from top to bottom,” he said. “The employees are the ones who have done the hard work of trying to recover.”
Lawmakers highlighted pilots’ union warnings “over two dozen” to Southwest about a potential operational collapse due to outdated employee scheduling software, and pressed Watterson on why Southwest had failed to heed its pilots’ concerns about what Murray called Southwest’s “fragile” infrastructure. .
“This is not plug and play. It has to be inclusive,” he said.
Although Watterson said severe winter weather was the root cause of the delays, he did not argue that the airline was experiencing technical problems.
“The last domino was that the crew scheduling system didn’t work the way we would like,” Watterson said.
He said the airline will conduct a systematic review of its failures and is committed to spending more than $1.3 billion on treatments, if needed.
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