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☆ Southwest Airlines is testing a software fix it developed after the Christmas travel meltdown
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Gregory Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Washington CNN —Southwest Airlines said it is testing software fixes that the company developed after its Christmas travel meltdown, as the airline faces multiple federal investigations. The software fixes are an “upgrade,” rather than a replacement of the crew scheduling system, Southwest executives said on a conference call with reporters Thursday. The company decided to keep the underlying software system because it “generally worked as designed” even during the meltdown, CEO Bob Jordan said. “We haven’t even talked cost, so I don’t know if it’s going to cost us anything or not,” said Southwest Chief Operations Officer Andrew Watterson. That external report should be delivered in the coming weeks and “we will attack it with a sense of urgency,” Jordan said.

☆ Southwest Meltdown Shows Airlines Need Tighter Software Integration
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Southwest’s software wasn’t designed to solve problems of that scale, Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson said Thursday, forcing the airline to revert to manual scheduling. Unlike some large rivals with hub-and-spoke networks, Southwest planes hopscotch from city to city, which may have been another complicating factor. Mr. Alamzad said the most serious IT challenge airlines face stems from the applications developed in silos by vendors or the airlines themselves. Southwest recently completed an upgrade of its new reservation system and had been working through multiyear upgrades to systems used in its operations. Other carriers have given priority to upgrading customer-facing reservations platforms and flier loyalty programs over operations systems, Mr. Alamzad said.

☆ Why Southwest is still melting down
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( David Goldman | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Still, Southwest canceled another 2,300 flights today, long after its rivals had resumed normal service. Here’s why is Southwest taking so long to get its operations back on track: Southwest got unlucky with the location of the storm and its timing. And outdated scheduling technology left Southwest scrambling to match crew with planes. Bad luckThe storm hit Chicago and Denver hard, where Southwest has two of its biggest hubs – Chicago Midway airport and Denver International airport. Although Southwest says it was fully staffed for the holiday weekend, illness makes adjusting to increased system stress difficult.

☆ Premarket stocks: Wall Street's biggest winners and losers in 2022
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

The S&P 500 is down nearly 20% and with two trading days left in the year, investors’ hopes of a miraculous recovery have been dashed. The energy sector has so far returned more than 60% this year, significantly outperforming every other S&P 500 sector. Occidental Petroleum has been the biggest gainer of the year in the S&P 500, up 122% year-to-date. The energy sector reported the highest year-over-year earnings growth of all 11 sectors, at 137.3%. Elon Musk’s Tesla (TSLA) is also down about 70%, making the auto tech company the third worst performer this year.

☆ Analysis: Southwest got billions of dollars in taxpayer aid. Why is its service still a mess?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

Southwest Airlines received more than $7 billion from that program. However, analysts say, Southwest’s service meltdown is unrelated to the taxpayer assistance the airline received in 2020. Cancelled Southwest Airlines flights are seen on the flight schedules at LaGuardia Airport, Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2022, in New York. In April 2020, airline passenger traffic plummeted 96% and stayed 60% below 2019 levels in 2020, according to the US Government Accountability Office. “The problems at Southwest Airlines over the last several days go beyond weather,” she said in a statement.

☆ Hundreds more flights are canceled, but winter storm travel disruptions are easing
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Leslie Josephs | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

Flight cancellations eased further on Monday but disruptions from severe winter weather across the U.S. lingered at the tail end of Christmas weekend. From Wednesday through Saturday, about a quarter of Southwest’s flights were canceled, and two-thirds were delayed, according to FlightAware data. On Monday, more than 1,700 flights were canceled and 2,200 more were delayed, down from nearly 3,200 canceled flights and 7,700 delayed U.S. flights on Sunday. Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Alaska Airlines were among the other carriers affected by the weather. More than half of U.S.-based airlines’ flights arrived late from Thursday through Saturday, with delays averaging 81 minutes, according to FlightAware.

☆ Airlines cancel 17,000 flights due to severe winter weather but disruptions ease
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Leslie Josephs | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Flight cancellations eased further on Monday but disruptions from severe winter weather across the U.S. lingered at the tail end of Christmas weekend. Carriers are likely to detail the costs of the disruptions when they report results next month, if not earlier. Southwest had been canceling many flights proactively in an effort to stabilize its operation, COO Andrew Watterson said. From Wednesday through Saturday, about a quarter of Southwest's flights were canceled, and two-thirds were delayed, according to FlightAware data. Airlines often cancel flights proactively during bad weather to avoid having planes, crews and customers out of place, problems that can make recovery from a storm more difficult.

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