Mike Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that they have been hearing that the airline is planning for a “mostly full schedule come Friday.”
Meanwhile, an official for the union representing Southwest pilots said they expect to have their flight schedules almost back to normal by the end of the work week. The operational emergency – experienced only at Denver, according to the company – is distinct from the issue the company says is to blame for the cascade of cancellations.ĭenver International Airport has announced plans to conduct after-action reviews with the airport’s three major carriers – Frontier, Southwest and United – to learn from the disruptions while the situation is still fresh. The Washington Post cites a Southwest memo related to the operational emergency, dated December 21, in which the airline’s vice president for ground operations declared the condition because of an “unusually high number of absences” of Denver-based ramp employees, including sick calls and personal days for afternoon and evening shifts. The spokesperson could not say whether the staffing policy remains in place or when the special rules ended. The emergency staffing procedures in Denver included requiring a note from a doctor to verify illness after an employee calls out sick, a Southwest spokesperson told CNN Wednesday. Meanwhile, the airline’s decision to enact “operational emergency” staffing procedures last week at the airport in Denver as a massive winter storm bore down hints at a tangle of factors contributing to the airline’s operational crisis.
He’s pulling no punches, referring to the situation as a complete “meltdown” of the system. With a hub system, there's a ready pool of crew members and pilots who can report to work at a major airport.īy the point-to-point method, "Southwest's cancellations created a giant snowball effect that rippled across its carefully choreographed network, leaving planes and crews scattered across the country," analysts were quoted as saying.īecause Southwest is the largest airline in 23 of the top 25 travel markets in the United States, when the severe weather led to many canceled flights, it resulted in airplanes and crew members being out of position in dozens of cities, it noted.As beleaguered Southwest Airlines continues to sort out stranded passengers, uncollected baggage and out-of-position airplanes, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has taken the airline to task.
Other large carriers like United and American rely on a "hub-and-spoke" model in which planes typically fly from smaller cities to a hub airport where passengers change planes. Point-to-point flights cut travel times by eliminating the intermediate stop - typically a big advantage for travelers who are not flying from major metro areas, said the report. Southwest uses a "point-to-point" route model that often lets passengers fly directly from smaller cities and regions without having to stop at a central hub like Denver or New York. And Southwest said in a statement on Wednesday that it planned to fly one third of its scheduled flights for the next several days as it tries to return to normal operations, meaning it would continue to cancel close to 2,500 flights a day. More than 2,500 flights, or 62 percent of its planned flights on Wednesday, were canceled, according to FlightAware. 29 (Xinhua) - Five days after severe winter weather wreaked havoc on holiday air travel across the United States, most major carriers are back up and running, but at Southwest Airlines it was a very different story, reported The New York Times on Thursday. (Xinhua/Zhao Hanrong)īy the point-to-point method, "Southwest's cancellations created a giant snowball effect that rippled across its carefully choreographed network, leaving planes and crews scattered across the country." People work on a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max aircraft at the Southern California Logistics Airport, also known as Victorville Airport, in Victorville, California, the United States, on March 27, 2019.
0 kommentar(er)
