Southwest Airlines blames IT breakdown for stranding holiday travelers
- Reference: 1672259491
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/12/28/southwest_outdated_it/
- Source link:
In a call with employees, Watterson blamed the extended delays and cancellations on outdated scheduling software, according to a transcript obtained by [1]CNN .
In effect the winter storm that flowed across much of the US triggered a cascade event from which the company's IT infrastructure was ill-equipped to manage. Matching crew members with aircraft broke down as the airline struggled to meet Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations.
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Southwest was ultimately forced to schedule crews to flights manually. A process Watterson described as an "extraordinarily difficult" and "tedious, long process."
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To reduce the burden on staff and get planes, crews, and passengers in the air, Southwest made the decision to cancel more flights. "After days of trying to operate as much of our full schedule across the busy holiday weekend, we reached a decision point to significantly reduce our flying to catch up," Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in a [5]video message .
Jordan also acknowledged the need to upgrade the airline's infrastructure to avoid future IT breakdowns. "We need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what's happening now," he said.
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In 2017, Southwest [7]completed a migration to Amadeus Altéa passenger service system, one of two industry standard platforms widely used throughout the aviation industry. Southwest Airlines declined to address The Register's request for additional information regarding the origins of the failure or the specific IT systems effected.
Southwest will continue to operate at a reduced schedule to reposition crew and planes where they're needed most. The airline claims it should be back on schedule "before next week."
According to [8]FlightAware , of the 2,813 US flights canceled Wednesday, Southwest was responsible for 2,509.
Southwest attracts USDOT ire
The scale of the disruption had already attracted the ire of the US Department of Transportation. In a Tweet Tuesday, the USDOT [9]called Southwest's rate of cancellations and delays "unacceptable," and promised to investigate whether Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.
And on Wednesday US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg characterized the situation as a "Meltdown," and called on Southwest to make customers whole in an [10]interview with ABC early Wednesday.
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"They need to make sure that these stranded passengers get to where they need to go and that they're provided adequate compensation not just for the flight itself…, but also things like hotels like ground transportation, like meals, because this is the airline's responsibility," he said.
[12]American Airlines decides to cruise into Azure's cloud
[13]Delta Airlines takes flight with Amazon Web Services
[14]FAA asks for vendor feedback on $10b tech contract
[15]License to launch: UK space regulator gives Virgin Orbit satellites the go-ahead
The airline is encouraging customers impacted by cancellations or delays to rebook or request a refund at [16]http://southwest.com/traveldisruption
Time for IT from this century?
Over the past year several airlines have announced sweeping upgrades to their IT infrastructure, in part to avoid pitfalls like the one Southwest is now digging its way out of.
This summer Delta [17]announced it would modernize and migrate its workloads to Amazon Web Services, however it's not clear how much of the company's backbone infrastructure is bound for the cloud.
This spring, American Airlines went even farther announcing a similar partnership with Microsoft to [18]migrate its data warehousing and legacy apps to a single operations hub on Azure. In addition to cutting operating costs, a key goal of the contract was to boost efficiency.
According to American, the integration with Azure will speed up bag tracking, enable preemptive rerouting based on weather conditions, and simulate larger changes using digital twins. The collaboration also involved the development of a mobile application that allows airline staff to access applications and communicate from wherever they are. These are all things we're sure Southwest wishes it had after the past few days. ®
Get our [19]Tech Resources
[1] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/27/business/southwest-airlines-service-meltdown/index.html
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y6zKj1eFiq6RTwSi2P-ImQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y6zKj1eFiq6RTwSi2P-ImQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y6zKj1eFiq6RTwSi2P-ImQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://swamedia.com/releases/release-7e05ea1637937dc7354128bee780ad75-video-southwest-airlines-ceo-bob-jordan-issues-statement
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y6zKj1eFiq6RTwSi2P-ImQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://amadeus.com/en/insights/press-release/southwest-airlines-completes-transition-to-amadeus-altea
[8] https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/
[9] https://twitter.com/usdot/status/1607558478859759616
[10] https://twitter.com/GMA/status/1608075800254767105
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y6zKj1eFiq6RTwSi2P-ImQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/19/american_airlines_azure/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/13/delta_lands_in_amazon_web/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/22/faa_10b_tech_deal/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/22/virgin_orbit_license/
[16] http://southwest.com/traveldisruption
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/13/delta_lands_in_amazon_web/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/19/american_airlines_azure/
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Blame the Computer
After running closer and closer to the wall, eventually we realized that we just didn't have enough crews and planes to run scheduled operations.
So we had to abandon our scheduled operations, and run a skeleton operation while we did crew off-time and aircraft maintenance.
Then, since our scheduling system wasn't able to schedule 5 flights into 6 flights, we blamed the software.
SouthWest has a specific problem: a larger-than-normal fraction of their flights are loops, rather than out-and-back flights. With an out-and-back flight, when one airport is closed, and you cancel one "out" flight, the corresponding "back" flight is also cancelled, and you still have a plane and crew in position. With a loop schedule, when one leg is cancelled, the entire loop is cancelled, and the plane and crew isn't in position for off-time and maintenance. They also have a general problem: there isn't any fat in their operations, and they don't have enough spare crews to cover crew down-time and aircraft positioning when the schedule is badly disrupted. Blaming this on the scheduling software is disingenuous.
I did a simple optimization problem for cutting shapes out of sheet stainless-steel. I understand that there is no closed-form solution for allocating the position of shapes withing a shape. Sometimes you wind up with off-cuts where the total area of offcut is larger than the next small piece you want to cut. But your offcuts are thin jagged pieces, not the circle or square you need next. But at some point, a "better optimisation system" isn't what you want. What you need is more sheets of stainless steel.
Re: Blame the Computer
It's the trade off, you want cheap flights the airline can't have a backup aircraft and crew fro each flight.
[Southwest] also acknowledged the need to upgrade the airline's infrastructure to avoid future IT breakdowns
Management always put off infrastructure upgrades until it affects their bonus when the infrastructure fails.
My bet is that any upgrades have been determined by management rather than the IT department (if they still have one)
You would win that bet every time.
Cloud
Flight management systems running on Azure and AWS. What could possibly go wrong...
Re: Cloud
You’ll find it’s more about the GDS than Azure.
Very simple explanation...former CEO Gary Kelly
Long time very happy SWA customer here. Going back almost 40 years.
Herb Kelleher built the best airline in the world bar none in the decades he ran SouthWest. It was a genuine pleasure to fly SWA and everyone who worked for SWA not only seemed to love their job but made you feel really welcome. Only British Caledonian in my experience even started to come close in such a positive cabin crew / ground crew experience.
Then Herb retired and soon after this bean counter named Gary Kelly took over. Think of him as another Willie Walsh. But without the charm (yes, that bad). And very quickly stories started appearing of how Kelly and his people were treating the employees in an increasingly shoddy way. As long as Herb was still alive Kelly was under some restraint in how badly he treated the staff but once Herb died Kelly was soon treating the staff as badly as almost all the other big carriers.
Kelly and his people payed themselves huge salaries / bonuses then spent billions on "stock buybacks". Which tells you everything you need to know about his priorities. Then he bailed last year and handed the big stinking mess on the point of collapse over to a guy named Bob Jordan who looks like a genuine good guy but who was the designated fall guy for the Kelly years which destroyed SWA.
The current and previous SWA collapses have a lot in common with the never ending BA debacles. But the best analogy is the way GEC which had been built up by Weinstock over decades into a huge success and was totally destroyed in only a few years by his successor, George Simpson. Another bean counter. Built up in 40 years, gone in 4.
The people I feel sorriest for are the employees of SWA. To see the company they dedicated their lives to, and for which they worked so hard for, utterly destroyed by some greedy nasty worthless bean counter. Next time I have to book a West Coast flight it will be with SWA. As an act of loyalty to such a fabulous workforce who have made what is usually a miserable experience, flying US domestic, an always pleasant experience. No matter how bad a flying experience it proves to be it will be still better than flying United, AA etc.
Since that first day in the mid 1980's when I handed over my $35 for a ticket to LA and got a supermarket checkout style receipt and a very flimsy boarding-card and I thought, well this is going to be different. And it was, it a very good way. For the next four decades.
Re: Very simple explanation...former CEO Gary Kelly
Excellent explanation.
Thanks. I wondered what happened to SWA. I was pretty sure it was management change, as that is usually the case.
And lo and behold, you've proven it was.
Re: Very simple explanation...former CEO Gary Kelly
And competition from both majors consolidating and offering cheap connections with their affiliates and other budget airlines copying the playbook.
You can't just say, if only they didn't care about money but continued to pay well and offer cheaper fares they would be great!
Doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes….
… to figure out which GDS provider they use.
Some FAA flexibility ?
So it's fine for your crew to have spent 24hours commuting to get to this flight. But if they go over flight hours while sitting on the plane waiting 2hours for deicing you all have to go back to the gate, unload and wait for another 'fresh' crew to spend 24 hours battling through snow storms to get there.
I wonder if there is some scope for emergency rules in bad weather, if they can be written so they don't become the normal working conditions
Outdated scheduling software?
Shirley the blame is on whoever allowed (and still allows) that particular software to be used, right?
It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools & all that.
I remember flight scheduling working quite nicely in the '60s, so how old IS that software, anyway?
Failed while failing
Southwest received $7.2 billion of public subsidies to help them get their act together. Maybe it's time to look for criminal misuse of funds? Throwing money at contractors and cloud providers, if that was even done, doesn't count as money properly spent.