fell Tuesday nearly 1% while its closest rivals - American, Delta and United - all gained at least 1.5%. Southwest said last month it would add deicing equipment and increase staffing during winter weather that is cold enough to limit the amount of time that ground workers can stay outside. The airline’s unions have said they warned management about problems with the crew-scheduling system after a previous meltdown in October 2021.ĬEO Robert Jordan has embarked on a campaign to repair the airline's damaged reputation. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who led that hearing, said Tuesday's breakdown “is another demonstration that Southwest Airlines needs to upgrade their systems and stop the negative impacts to individual travelers.” Those cancellations cost the airline more than $1 billion and led to an ongoing Transportation Department investigation and a congressional hearing during which lawmakers complained that Southwest provided little or no help to stranded travelers. In December, Southwest canceled nearly 17,000 flights in a 10-day stretch around Christmas - wrecking holiday travel plans for well over 2 million people - when a winter storm shut down its operations in Denver and Chicago and the airline's system for rescheduling pilots and flight attendants was overwhelmed. He said Southwest has underinvested in technology while growing rapidly, and it suffers from an “insular culture" that "keeps them from looking outside for solutions." Rob Britton, a former American Airlines executive who teaches crisis management at Georgetown University, said the damage from Tuesday's incident will be minor but will add to the erosion of Southwest’s image. “What matters now for Southwest is getting to the cause and doing all it can to ensure incidents like this don’t occur again.” Southwest Airlines planes were briefly grounded nationwide Tuesday for what the airline called an intermittent technology issue, leading to more than 2,200 delayed flights just four months after the carrier suffered a much bigger meltdown over the Christmas travel rush. This will have no long-lasting affect on Southwest’s reputation,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst with Atmosphere Research Group. Tuesday's delays added to the picture of an airline that has struggled more than most with technology issues. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg retweeted an FAA post about the ground stop, adding, “We are here to ensure passengers have strong protections when airline failures like this affect their plans.” He referred travelers to a Transportation Department checklist of passenger rights, and his press secretary noted that “no other airlines experienced disruptions.” On the positive side, Southwest had only about a dozen flights canceled, roughly in line with other major airlines, according to FlightAware. By late afternoon on the East Coast, more than half of all Southwest flights were delayed, and the airline accounted for half of all delays nationwide.
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