The airline industry has faced difficulties at the beginning of the summer, which were underlined late last week when tens of thousands of flights had to be canceled, diverted, or delayed.
Since last summer, U.S. airlines have been caught off guard as they struggle to satisfy the sudden increase in demand for travel.
Travelers are concerned about summer meltdowns due to the surge in summer demand and ongoing airline staffing issues.
And possibly for good reason—last week's delays and the controversy over Memorial Day weekend did little to boost trust.
In the midst of the turmoil, Southwest's CEO Bob Jordan assumed control.
His selection for the position was made public last summer.
Early in his transition into the position, which took effect in February, in October, Jordan worked with then-CEO Gary Kelly to manage Southwest's own operational collapse that resulted in the cancellation of more than 1,800 flights (Jordan has been with Southwest in various roles since 1988, including most recently as executive vice president of corporate services).
Jordan attended the Southwest ceremony to dedicate eight new gates last week in Phoenix.
He acknowledged that the airline had made mistakes just this spring, misusing its scarce resources and neglecting to make sure it could meet demand.
Jordan argued that Southwest is more equipped to handle the heat, though.
It was "too late for [last] summer," Jordan said, adding, "I'll completely acknowledge that we scheduled — we got into the summer, we realised that we needed to employ."
It harmed our clients, he continued.
"It hurt our crews, it hurt our ground ops people, and it hurt our pilots,"
The hiring process, according to Jordan, has improved Southwest's staffing status from the previous year.
Since then, he claimed, "We've hired 14,000 employees."
"Of that, 20% are [flight] crews, 20% are ground operations, and 10% are in our call centres," the source said.
Jordan chose not to reveal the proportion of pilots among the new personnel.
For all U.S. airlines, including Southwest, the problem of pilot recruitment and retention has been challenging.
With concerns of logistical challenges during rerouting and effects on their personal life, the airline's pilots have been frustrated by erratic operations over the past year.
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), the pilots' union, has been raising its voice more and more in its attempts to obtain a new contract.
Pilots from SWAPA demonstrated outside Dallas Love Field on Tuesday (DAL).
Early retirements during the early stages of the pandemic intensified a national pilot shortage that had been building for years.
Regional airlines and the smaller cities they serve have been most negatively impacted by the shortage, whereas mainline carriers have been adding pilots in large numbers.
However, smaller, more affordable airlines like JetBlue and Spirit as well as others that specialise more on domestic travel, like Southwest, have also found it more difficult than usual to appropriately staff their pilot ranks.
For instance, due to the pilot shortage, Southwest is operating around 30 fewer aircraft per day than it would like, according to Jordan, who noted that "the constraint is main pilots to fly all the aircraft."
The union, meanwhile, is adamant that a new contract is necessary to sustainably increase the number of pilots.
To attract and keep pilots during the shortage, "[Southwest] requires an industry-leading [collective bargaining agreement] – that means career pay, disability/benefits, and quality of life advances,"
SWAPA spokesman Amy Robinson
"[Southwest] requires SWAPA's inputs that are currently in the [collective bargaining agreement] rewrite to stabilise the business and make things more efficient."
Jordan highlighted that the airline, like the union, wants a new deal to be concluded despite the union's complaints.
Jordan stated that contract discussions are challenging.
"We want contracts for our employees, and we want certainty.
There is no strategy to stall, go slowly, or do anything similar, I can assure you, starting with me.
We are all the business and all of our personnel, he continued.
SWAPA recently cited an opportunistic tweet from the airline, accusing it of overscheduling flights that it lacked the crew to execute, in one of the nastiest moments of the spat.
Jordan disagreed, saying that while last year's overly ambitious plan may have hindered the airline's capacity to recover from weather delays, this summer's programme has been scaled back sufficiently to add a healthy buffer.
The second quarter timetable was cut by five or six points from what was initially released in April, he said, and is now 7 percent behind 2019.
We have more room to respond to trend changes, such as higher sick time, that we have observed.
Since the first Omicron wave started in December, airlines have experienced higher rates of sick call-outs, which have been connected to both ongoing COVID outbreaks and employee fatigue brought on by the pandemic.
According to Jordan, Southwest typically receives 3 to 4 percent more illness calls than the airline did in past years.
Jordan cited the airline's performance over Memorial Day Weekend as proof that it is better prepared to handle disruptions.
According to data from FlightAware, Southwest cancelled 123 out of 21,408 scheduled flights during the holiday travel period from Thursday, May 26, to Tuesday, May 31, representing 1% of the schedule, and delayed 4,134 flights, or 19% of the schedule.
The airline had its worst day ever, cancelling 86 (2%) flights and delaying 1,118. (30 percent ).
In contrast, American cancelled 289 mainline flights (2% of total) and delayed 3,658 (21%), United cancelled 186 (1% of total) and delayed 3,216 (24%) and Delta cancelled 875 (5% of total) and delayed 3,126. (19 percent ).
Regional airline flights performed somewhat worse, according to FlightAware, and are not included in those statistics.
Jordan considers it a success that cancellations were largely under control.
Despite some delays, he claimed, "We actually had extremely good operational performance."
We took off a little later, but our A30 — on-time within 30 minutes — was actually very impressive.
The cancel rate was half as high in May, June, and on Memorial Day as compared to March and April, he continued.
Air traffic control problems in the Florida region on the weekend of June 10–12, which have historically hampered Southwest, were also able to maintain the airline's cancellation rate under 2 percent, according to Jordan.
As a result of the delays, Jordan explained, "We're running the airline a little later, but our A30 is extremely good, and we're getting you there."
"Unlike what was happening in the summer of 2021, we have a fairly high completion rate."
Jordan added that the airline made improvements to the team in charge of scheduling the crew in order to better manage resources during erratic operations.
Thousands of flights were cancelled in October due to thunderstorms and air traffic control problems in Florida, and it took the airline more than three days to redeploy pilots and flight attendants as a result.
The actual test of whether all of this will be sufficient, however, is about to take place, according to Jordan.
The Fourth of July weekend will be the next test, he said.
That will put everyone to the test.
We feel great, but I believe that will be our next challenge as a team, he continued.
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