Looking at flights stats over the last few days and we see that US carriers have largely been operationally resilient this year, even with bad weather sweeping through parts of the nation. The lone exception is Southwest Airlines, though...
Looking at flights stats over the last few days and we see that US carriers have largely been operationally resilient this year, even with bad weather sweeping through parts of the nation. The lone exception is Southwest Airlines, though even with over 1,000 flight delays Southwest is running a remarkably better Christmas travel operation than last year.
Southwest Airlines Flight Delays Persist
Many of you will recall the Southwest Airlines meltdown last year around this time that confounded the holiday plans of hundreds of thousands of travelers (over 10,000 flights were cancelled). It began in Denver, but spread across the nation, costing Southwest $800 million. Southwest promised to heavily invest in its technology and infrastructure to avoid repeat occurrences and to this point has avoided a meltdown in 2023.
But Southwest has posted some alarming delays over the last few days which suggest it still has a long ways to go in terms of fully correcting the core issues in which delays snowball into more delays. This was not a systemwide issue because competitors like American, Delta, and United posted much better numbers during the same period despite facing the same weather patterns (even in some of the same hub cities). Per Flight Aware:
On Saturday, Southwest Airlines delayed 31% of its flights (only 2% were cancelled). On Sunday, Southwest Airlines delayed 29% of its flights (cancelling 6%). Today, Southwest Airlines has relayed delayed 11% of its flights and cancelled 5%.Granted, these numbers are far better than a year ago, but still represent a lot of interrupted holiday plans.
So what does Southwest blame the delays on? Fog in Chicago.
“With visibility remaining below required operational minimums throughout the night and continuing this morning, we’ve modified our planned start for today (Sunday) at Chicago Midway. We have all-hands on deck as our employees are working quickly to take care of our customers and accommodate them on alternative flights.
“We continue to experience some delays and diversions as fog remains a factor. We apologize for the inconvenience to our customers as we work to get them to their destination safely.”
The weather has been bad in Chicago, but United and American have managed to keep operations flowing across town at Chicago O’Hare better than Southwest has Midway (United has delayed more flights than American).
Some travelers apparently did not learn their lesson from last year:
@SouthwestAir you guys ruined my Christmas two years in a row. Utter incompetence in Omaha. Just can’t trust you guys ever again.
— matt (@Amer1canus) December 25, 2023
CONCLUSION
Southwest has had a rough few days, even as the issues are nowhere close to the four-day meltdown a year ago that led to over 10,000 flight cancellations. Even with minimal cancellations, thousands of flight have been delayed over the last few days, again interrupting the plans of travelers across the country.
image: Southwest Airlines