Summary
- Harsh weather caused significant disruptions for travelers this Christmas, resulting in delays and cancellations for a lot of airlines.
- Southwest Airlines was the toughest hit, with over 1,230 delayed flights and 260 cancellations, mainly attributable to fog at Chicago Midway Airport.
- While Southwest has seen improvements in comparison with last yr’s winter meltdown, they still face challenges in managing severe weather and maintaining their crew network.
Harsh weather disrupted travel across america this Christmas Eve. Passengers attempting to travel for the vacations were met with severe winter weather and fog, causing lots of of delays and cancellations on one in all the yr’s busiest travel days. Nevertheless, while the chaos calmed for many airlines as they adjusted to the demand and weather, this will not be said for Southwest Airlines, because the Dallas-based carrier canceled probably the most flights amongst US carriers this Christmas.
Troubles in Chicago
On Saturday, fog at Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW) resulted in quite a few cancellations. As Southwest is the most important airline at Midway with greater than 90% of the market share, the carrier suffered probably the most from the cruel weather. Now, those cancellations are having a knock-on effect throughout the airline’s network.
Today, as of 04:00 UTC, in line with FlightAware data, over 1,230 Southwest flights were delayed on Sunday, accounting for 28% of the airline’s total operation. Meanwhile, an extra 260 services were canceled, which is around 5% of Southwest’s entire operation. Flights to and from Chicago Midway are the majority of the Southwest delays; as of 04:00 UTC, there have been 109 cancellations from the airport – 38% of total flights – and 110 flights have been delayed. In contrast, no other major US airline has canceled greater than three flights on Sunday.
Photo: Markus Mainka | Shutterstock.
Although Southwest is leading amongst US airlines when it comes to delays and cancellations this Christmas, that is nothing in comparison with the Dallas-based carrier’s disruptions last winter. Last December, the Dallas-based carrier’s operations melted down, leading to the cancellation of over 16,700 flights and leaving 2 million passengers stranded throughout the holiday season. The vacation meltdown resulted in an $800 million loss for the airline within the fourth quarter of 2022, also incurring a $140 million superb from america Department of Transportation (DOT).
Southwest Airlines Fined $140 Million For Last Winter’s Meltdown
Along with its superb, Southwest Airlines will establish a compensation policy for canceled or delayed flights, giving affected passengers $75.
In a press release from a Southwest Airlines spokesperson to ABC7 Chicago, the airline noted:
“We have now all-hands on deck as our Employees are working to quickly to handle our Customers and accommodate them on alternative flights. Chicago Midway is our fourth busiest airport operation, with greater than 200 departures a day scheduled over the vacation weekend. The fog at Midway canceled about 2% of our total flights on Saturday and lower than 1% of our total flights early on Sunday.”
Learning from last yr
In response to the meltdown, the airline has promised to take proactive measures to handle the outage last December. Southwest has vowed to upgrade its technology software – specifically its crew scheduling software – which couldn’t handle the numerous changes to crew assignments due to severe weather. Chief Operations Officer at Southwest, Andrew Watterson, further addressed the airline’s winter preparedness in a third-quarter earnings call for the airline.
Photo: Denver International Airport
Watterson explained that the disruption was triggered by a storm that concurrently hit multiple Southwest hubs, amongst other reasons. The airline devised an motion plan consisting of winter operations, accelerating operation investments, and cross-team collaboration to combat this. One other factor was that 25% of Southwest’s crew relies in Chicago or Denver, each hit by severe weather. As such, the airline couldn’t bring its crew from those locations to their next flights throughout its route network.
Lastly, Southwest has invested an immense amount of effort into ensuring more robust winter operations. Within the event of severe winter weather, flight crews will still have the option to operate on flights throughout the network. As such, Southwest invested in key stations based on the calculated throughput obligatory to keep up the crew network.
Were your travel plans with Southwest impacted by yesterday’s disruption? Tell us within the comments.