With Southwest Airlines' Christmas-week meltdown hopefully over, the carrier is promising major tech upgrades to keep a similar situation happening in the future. The airline's unions have said that antiquated software used for crew scheduling was the biggest part of the nightmare that left thousands of flights a day canceled, stranding passengers.
Southwest, the largest U.S. domestic carrier, suffered the same weather issues as other airlines, but was unable to recover and resume normal operations when the others did. After originally pointing a finger at the weather, the airline eventually acknowledged that the inability to get crews assigned and in location prolonged the situation. Over the week, about two-thirds of Southwest's flights were canceled.
Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, in a video statement, claimed that “The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well 99 percent 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.” The claim was greeted with skepticism by the airline's pilot and flight attendant unions who say they have complained about flaws in the system for years.
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