Southwest Airlines chief operating officer Andrew Watterson said an upgrade to its crew scheduling software will be ready to go Friday after two rounds of testing, which should help fix some of the problems that led to a cascade of cancellations over the winter holidays.
Watterson, who testified Thursday before the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transporation Committee, took a conciliatory tone as Democrats criticized the Dallas-based carrier for canceling 16,700 flights in late December in one of the largest airline industry meltdowns in recent history.
Following the message that he and other Southwest leaders have repeated over and over again since December, Watterson apologized and said: “We’ve been mindful that an apology alone, no matter how heartfelt or how often stated, would not suffice.”
“The root cause was how we handled our winter operations, and that’s where you will see us put some focus over a multiyear period, because that’s what started the dominoes falling and the last domino was the crew scheduling system,” Watterson said.
Southwest is the target of an increasingly frustrated travel public. The disruptions in December paralyzed travel for more than a week before and after Christmas as about two million passengers lost seats on flights when bad weather combined with fragile crew scheduling systems to shut down most of the country’s largest domestic airline.
After reporting an $800 million hit, refunding and reimbursing customers and facing a Department of Transportation inquiry for potentially overscheduling flights, Southwest’s operations chief faced the wrath and bluster of Washington lawmakers looking for answers. After initially blaming its crew rescheduling software, Southwest Airlines executives have shifted blame to the entirety of its process for handling disruptions, including deficiencies in that software that reassigns pilots and flight attendants after delays and cancellations.
“With regards to our flight scheduling software, there’s a specific issue we had during the disruption and a fix will be put in tomorrow into production,” Watterson said. “But the overall flight scheduling system, we were looking to upgrade and replace that, so we’ve conducted a request for information from software vendors to evaluate those, and we’ll be going to a request for proposal here after we have the findings from our assessment.”
Senators drilled Watterson on what kind of upgrades and investments in technology were coming and why the company didn’t fix the problem sooner.
“Is it really a technology problem or is it a management problem?,” said Sen. Ted Budd, R-North Carolina.
Watterson conceded that even after spending more than $1 billion annually in recent years and budgeting $1.3 billion for technology infrastructure and upgrades this year, the company has “technology needs that need to be addressed.”
Southwest Airlines Pilot Association President Casey Murray said the company had plenty of warning about technology deficiencies after crew rescheduling software was blamed for previous, albeit smaller, meltdowns in recent years.
“For years our pilots have been sounding the alarm about Southwest’s inadequate crew scheduling technology and outdated operational process,” Murray said. “Unfortunately, those warnings have been summarily ignored by Southwest for years.”
Murray said the company “lost operational control” during the disruptions. Among his prepared testimony were photos that pilots took of onboard communications screens with messages asking who was piloting planes.
“Dispatch msg: Sched is asking to confirm who is operating this flight,” one screen read. “Pls send emp numbers to confirm. It is a mess down here.”
But much of the focus was on what Southwest is doing now and in the future to fix the problems that led to the meltdown, while Republicans including Texas’ Ted Cruz argued that customers will “vote with their feet” if the airline isn’t able to get a handle on its operational issues.
“Now as frustrating as those several days were, the question of whether Southwest has sufficiently made things right will ultimately be answered by the flying public,” said Cruz, the ranking Republican on the committee. “It will be answered by customers choosing whether or not to book a flight on Southwest.”
