Southwest Says It Plans to Restore Normal Flight Schedule Friday
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Southwest Airlines, caught in a vexing tangle of misplaced staff and technical problems since last week’s winter storm, said Thursday that it planned to return to normal operations on Friday “with minimal disruptions.”
Over its five-decade history, Southwest has cultivated a reputation for inexpensive tickets, reliable customer service and flight crews with a sense of humor. But the company’s meltdown stranded thousands of travelers, bewildered employees and put its executives on the defensive, possibly doing damage to Southwest’s brand that could take years to repair.
More than 2,300 of Southwest’s flights were canceled on Thursday, or about 58 percent of the flights that it had scheduled for the day. By contrast, the airline had canceled just 39 flights scheduled for Friday as of Thursday afternoon, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service.
“We know even our deepest apologies — to our customers, to our employees and to all affected through this disruption — only go so far,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.
Southwest’s problems started with a severe winter storm that disrupted every airline in the busy travel days before Christmas. But the company did not quickly bounce back like the rest of the industry, in large part because of technological shortcomings.
In a call with journalists on Thursday, Southwest’s executives said they would learn from the debacle, though they stopped short of committing to a timeline for fixing the airline’s computer systems so that they can withstand large-scale weather disruptions.
The company said the scheduling systems that match pilots and attendants to flights had become overwhelmed by the volume of changes that Southwest needed to make after frigid weather around Christmas forced it to begin delaying and canceling flights. That left it unable to quickly restart flights when the weather improved because it could not get crews to where its planes were. Southwest’s problems were compounded by its point-to-point system, in which planes do not regularly return to large hub airports — a contrast with other large airlines.
Southwest said it had marshaled a “volunteer army” of more than 1,000 corporate employees to manually schedule crews.
“You can’t plan to everything that could happen in any scenario,” Southwest’s chief executive, Bob Jordan, said. “But, yes, this has been an incredible disruption, and we can’t have this again.”
Southwest said the volunteers would be on standby for any future disruptions. “They brought their dogs; they brought their kids,” Andrew Watterson, Southwest’s chief operating officer, said on the call. “They all jumped in and helped out.”
The company’s slow recovery and poor communications during the crisis earned it intense criticism from travelers, labor union leaders and government officials.
The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, wrote to Mr. Jordan on Thursday, saying the disruption that Southwest customers had experienced was “unacceptable.” Mr. Buttigieg said he expected Southwest to reimburse customers for alternate travel arrangements they had to make when flights were canceled and offer prompt refunds.
“I hope and expect that you will follow the law, take the steps laid out in this letter and provide me with a prompt update on Southwest’s efforts to do right by the customers it has wronged,” Mr. Buttigieg wrote.
In an interview on “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, Mr. Buttigieg described the problems at Southwest as a “system failure.”
Southwest now has to engage in a long campaign to win back trust, said David A. Ball, the president of Ball Consulting Group, a corporate crisis management firm.
“When you have the secretary of transportation going on network television and saying that your company is in a meltdown, that’s pretty much the definition of a crisis,” Mr. Ball said.
He added that the disruptions to Southwest’s service would require a “multiyear rebuilding effort for the brand,” including a close look at “every aspect of their brand and of their business.”
As executives scrambled to restore normal operations, customers remained far from home and frustrated by the lack of progress or ability to contact customer service for help. Some had to spend more than $1,000 for tickets on other airlines or for rental cars for cross-country road trips.
Alaina Voccio, a high school teacher in Santa Monica, Calif., and her 17-year-old son had been stranded in Denver since last Friday after Southwest canceled their flight to Los Angeles.
Her relief upon hearing that Southwest expected its operations to return to normal on Friday was muted by the headache she had already endured — a missed Christmas celebration with her daughter, a missed trip to Florida, and hundreds of dollars spent on hotel rooms and meals.
“I’d be thrilled if that’s true,” said Ms. Voccio, who was scheduled for a return flight on Friday morning. Given that she hadn’t had any problems with Southwest before, Ms. Voccio said she would probably fly Southwest again if it adequately reimbursed the expenses that she and other travelers had accrued over the past week.
“I’m 46 years old, and I’ve been flying them since I was like 21. Stuff happens,” Ms. Voccio said. “I think if they take some cheap hard line, that’s going to sour me for my life.”
For Elsie Benitez and her husband, getting home for Christmas was blocked by a relentless series of missteps.
After arriving at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington on Saturday to fly home to Orlando, Fla., they learned that their flight had been canceled because of staffing shortages. They were rebooked for a flight leaving from Baltimore, about an hour’s drive away, for the next morning, Christmas Day.
When they arrived at the Baltimore airport, the flight was postponed repeatedly. After eight hours of delays, it was canceled.
“We spent all Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at the airport,” said Ms. Benitez, 57, who works as a real estate agent. “What a nightmare.”
Despite the chaos over the past few days, Southwest could bounce back, in part because it has engendered a lot of good will among loyal customers over the years, said Jason Mudd, the chief executive of Axia Public Relations, which helps companies facing crises but doesn’t have Southwest as a client.
“Usually it’s another airline or another brand in the industry that we hear about that is experiencing delays and cancellations very heavily,” Mr. Mudd said. “Southwest tends to be pretty reliable, or at least has a reputation for being very reliable and very on time and efficient.”
“When it’s done well, organizations are going to put people over profits and do the right thing,” Mr. Mudd said. “In this case, that’s what I’m counting on Southwest to do.”
Southwest’s stock price closed nearly 4 percent higher on Thursday.
Daniel Victor contributed reporting.