Southwest Airlines CEO Pledges No Repeat Of Last Winter’s Disruption

NEW YORK—Approaching the winter holiday travel season, Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan is confident in the airline’s preparedness, following 2022’s significant disruption.

“It will never happen again, I promise you that,” Jordan said at a Wings Club luncheon in New York City on Dec. 14.

A software he called “a game changer” is in place now, after having been developed internally “in just months,” he said. Jordan described the “industry leading” new solution as being able to solve the rerouting of aircraft in tandem with the rerouting of crew during irregular operations.

“What you do today typically is all airlines, you solve the metal or the aircraft, and then you throw that solution to the crews, and then have to solve the crew routing,” Jordan said. “A lot of times the metal problem makes the crew problems even harder, so they’ve come up with something that actually solves that together.”

2022’s disruption snowballed from a weather event into a multi-day incident after cascading, close-in flight cancellations overwhelmed the airline’s processes. More than 16,700 flights were canceled as Southwest worked to realign crews, schedules, and aircraft.

Its resulting action plan, complimentary to an existing operations modernization plan, focused on three areas: upgrading airport infrastructure, equipment, and preparedness; enhancing cross-team collaboration; and accelerating investments in technology and tools for irregular operations.

As it deployed its action plan, the airline looked at over 300 projects every week, Jordan noted, from more deicing equipment to sophisticated weather technology for its pilots to better understand holdover times between deicing and takeoff.

The Dallas-based carrier’s preparedness has had a recent test, when roughly eight inches of snow fell in Denver in recent weeks. Eyeing further efficiencies at the airport, Southwest is preparing to roll out tests in the 2024 first quarter of an AI solution aimed at improving turnaround performance.

“Our operation has been stellar in those weather conditions,” Jordan said of the recent Denver snow. “Weather will not be perfect, it never is, but we are ready.”