Southwest Airlines may have some upgrading to do to get business running again.
The airline company is allegedly running outdated software to schedule flights, which became a significant factor in the cancelations of its many flights in the past few days.
You may remember that various airlines canceled 3,000 accumulated flights on Christmas morning due to severe winter weather.
The mostly empty Southwest Airlines check in area, December 28, 2022 at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles. - The perfect storm of fierce snow squalls, howling wind and sub-zero temperatures forced the cancellation of thousands of flights in recent days, including around 5,900 on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to tracking site FlightAware.com. Most of the cancellations on December 27-28 were at Southwest Airlines, which pulled more than 60 percent of its flights due to cascading logistics issues.
Southwest Airlines Outdated Software Issue Details
An enraged pilot and union representative revealed to Business Insider that outdated software may have played a major role in the delays and cancelations Southwest Airlines announced in the past few days.
According to Mike Santoro, Vice President of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, a combination of harsh winter weather and "outdated software" brought the airline company to its knees, with the latter being responsible for most of the delays and cancelations.
Santoro said that the outdated systems were insufficient in keeping up with the pilots' and flight attendants' locations, overwhelming it and forcing schedulers to keep tabs by hand, per Gizmodo.
Some flights were canceled entirely because the airline company was "lacking" staff despite having enough flight attendants and other workers onboard and willing to work- an effect of the outdated system's ineffective tracking.
Lyn Montgomery, the president of the union representing the airline company's flight attendants, shared the same sentiments. According to Montgomery's statement in an interview with Houston's KHOU, the company's flight attendants were relying on an "outdated" and easily overbooked phone rescheduling system to get by during normal operations.
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Though a spokesperson for Southwest declined to address questions regarding the alleged outdated scheduling software, CNN's report says that the company names it as the main culprit of the recent cancelations and delays.
According to the report, the outdated scheduling software and the Federal Aviation Administration's strict regulations complicated the company's scheduling efforts.
Southwest Airlines COO Andrew Watterson explained on a call with employees that the outdated system couldn't handle the process of matching up crew members with ready-to-fly aircraft.
As a result, the company ended up with crewed and ready-to-fly planes, but because the system was incapable of handling the process, schedulers had to track them down by hand - a "tedious, long process."
Southwest Airline's Response
The airline company has reportedly canceled close to 16,000 flights since Dec. 22 and is still doing so as of press time.
Despite that, Southwest Airlines is doing so for a good reason: the company wants to reduce its flying by two-thirds to "catch up."
Watterson explained that doing so should give the company the resources it needs to handle that amount of activity, though he didn't say anything about upgrading the company's scheduling software.
However, it may want to do so as soon as it can as US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced that the Transportation Department would investigate the "complete meltdown" of the company's system, a separate CNN report stated.
Nevertheless, Santoro said that the company could go back to normal operations soon as Dec. 30, with the company only canceling 39 flights for that day - a massive decrease from the almost 2,350 canceled flights scheduled for Dec. 29.
Related Article: Airlines Cancel Over 3,000 Flights on Christmas Morning Due to Severe Winter Weather
