What’s really to blame for the Southwest Airlines meltdown? Experts weigh in

In one of the worst airline meltdowns in years, Southwest Airlines has canceled more than 9,200 flights nationwide since the start of last week’s winter storm, leaving travelers stranded during the Christmas holiday and scrambling to find alternative transportation.

The cancellations and delays compounded Tuesday and may stretch into this weekend, with several thousand flights already canceled Wednesday and Thursday. The U.S. Department of Transportation announced an investigation into the extent the Dallas-based airline is to blame.

“This storm really tested every single airline, and now I think we can say with with a pretty high degree of certainty that it pretty much broke Southwest,” Kyle Potter, executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, told the Star-Telegram. “It’s really been a perfect literal and figurative storm for Southwest that has led to this kind of unprecedented meltdown.”

Southwest Airlines continued to scrub at least 2,600 flights Tuesday as it struggled to recover from “operational challenges” caused by the winter storm, which battered most of the U.S. in the days leading up to Christmas. Data from FlightAware showed that the cancellations affected 63% of Southwest’s daily flight schedule.

The airline also scrubbed nearly 2,500 flights for Wednesday and 1,300 for Thursday as it tried to restore order to its mangled schedule. Travelers on nearly 800 flights experienced delays Tuesday.

Other airlines, also impacted by the storm, were well on their way to resuming normal operations. According to The Associated Press, American, United, Delta and JetBlue canceled between zero and 2% of their flights as of Tuesday. In stark contrast to Southwest, United canceled only 72 flights.

As Southwest’s problems mounted in the air, so did its value on Wall Street. As of Tuesday afternoon, shares had dropped approximately 6%.

While the massive winter storm hit a handful of Southwest Airline’s biggest airports in cities such as Denver, Chicago and Baltimore, the weather wasn’t entirely to blame, Potter said. Other major carriers fared better, with Delta canceling 316 flights Monday to Thursday and Spirit canceling 269.

One unique, longstanding issue exacerbated Southwest’s problems: outdated crew scheduling software that stopped working under increased demand. The airline uses the software SkySolver to assign flight attendants and pilots to each flight.

Without it, the airline has had to work manually by calling and emailing crew members, which is ineffective at such a large scale. It’s been a nightmare, resulting in hours-long wait times for crew members to get scheduled on flights, says Captain Michael Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.

“What it comes down to is our IT infrastructure and our scheduling department is not adequate to keep up with our complex point to point network,” Santoro told the Star-Telegram. “So you can’t keep track of pilots and flight attendants and airplanes and how we all match up together. When pilots and flight attendants get in the wrong places, or don’t make connections, it’s overwhelmed and can’t keep up with all the changes.”

Santoro says the software, built in 2010 with a few minor updates this year, can’t handle massive disruptions for the number of flights Southwest operates. When a flight is canceled and crew members have to be reassigned, the software must run a new solution, but it’s not able to keep up with the amount of cancellations and track down personnel. It can only handle up to 200 scheduling changes at a time, the association says.

Feds to investigate

The scale of cancellations and the preponderance of them at Southwest has spurred the U.S. Department of Transportation, which oversees the airlines, to issue a terse statement about its next move.

“The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan,” the U.S. Department of Transportation said in a statement. It called Southwest’s rate of cancellations and delays and reports of lack of prompt customer service “unacceptable.”

Thrifty Traveler’s Potter hopes this is the wake-up call needed for airlines to be accountable when things go awry, guaranteeing compensation for travelers when flights are significantly delayed or canceled. In the short-term, Potter says, the DOT will review the extent to which the cancellations were related to the winter weather compared to how much Southwest is at fault.

The department will also ensure that the airline does right by its customers whose flights were canceled, including by covering hotel stays and transportation costs. The airline has said that those with canceled flights can request a full refund or receive flight credit that won’t expire.

“We had a tough day today,” Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan told The Wall Street Journal on Monday evening. “In all likelihood we’ll have another tough day tomorrow as we work our way out of this. This is the largest-scale event that I’ve ever seen.”

Southwest spokesman Jay McVay said the cancellations snowballed as storm systems moved across the country, leaving crews and planes out of place.

“So we’ve been chasing our tails, trying to catch up and get back to normal safely, which is our number one priority, as quickly as we could,” he told a news conference late Monday in Houston. “And that’s exactly how we ended up where we are today.”

On Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Rep. Collin Allred of Dallas called for transparency from Southwest, saying “the public deserves answers.”

“North Texas is the proud home to Southwest Airlines and many of its hardworking employees, but the catastrophic collapse of their flight schedule has impacted thousands of customers, leaving many families stranded over the holidays,” Allred tweeted. “This is unacceptable.”

More delays ahead

It’s going to be a while before the airline is running smoothly. In a statement Monday, the airline said it would continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one-third of its routes for the next several days. Travelers who booked with Southwest in the next two weeks should keep a close eye on changes and consider booking a backup flight with another airline or alternative transportation, Potter recommends.

“Southwest basically has to put the entire airline back together to get things moving on time again, and that could take even longer,” he says.

In three years of negotiations, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association proposed a contract that includes scheduling improvements, which Santoro says will help pilots be more efficient. The association wants Southwest to invest in better infrastructure and upgrade the scheduling software.

“We’ve had meltdowns every year for five or six years,” Santoro says. “It’s finally time that they hopefully learned that they need to actually do this this time, invest the money and get it done.”