Southwest announces actions to boost operations

Southwest will share an overview of the prioritized actions being implemented in an effort to strengthen the airline’s operational resiliency. The actions will be previewed by Bob Jordan, Southwest’s president and CEO, at the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference in New York. As a result of the initial assessments conducted by Southwest, the airline has developed a three-part tactical action plan to boost operational resiliency in key areas across the company. The airline’s existing five-year operational modernization plan, which began in 2022, is also underway and focuses on operational investments and organizational alignment to support customers and employees. In addition to Winter Storm Elliot, which was more severe than expected, a driver of the disruption was determined to be the volume of cascading and close-in flight cancelations during the storm which overwhelmed Station operations and the airline’s crew network and hindered established processes and internal tools. While the airline had existing technology and staffing in place to handle many types of irregular operations, the pace and breadth of disruptions during this extreme event strained the ability to create timely operational solutions. The airline will provide additional communication in the coming weeks, including a microsite summarizing key findings and mitigation actions. The airline began a five-year operational modernization plan prior to December 2022 with many initiatives already underway to support operational resiliency. Now, ongoing implementation of tools and technology that allow for a greater pace of recovery during extreme events will be prioritized, and the airline is, currently, budgeted to spend more than $1.3B on investments, upgrades, and maintenance of information technology systems in 2023. For example, Crew Optimization software has been recently upgraded to address a functional gap that was revealed in December. Crew Scheduling and Customer phone systems also will be upgraded for better surge protection and efficiency during periods of high call volumes. Challenges with infrastructure, winter equipment, and winter weather preparedness have been, or will be, addressed through various actions, including purchasing additional deicing trucks; securing additional deicing pads and deicing fluid capacity at key network locations; and purchasing more engine covers and engine heaters for cold weather operations. Southwest was the first U.S. airline to hire back to pre-pandemic total staffing by June 2022, and, going forward, the airline will further augment winter staffing levels-for example, when Ground Operations Employees are limited to the amount of time they can work outside in extreme temperatures. Additionally, the airline plans to implement a new weather application to provide Crews with more real-time and dynamic weather indications to enhance deicing holdover times-which determines the time required before aircraft must be deiced again prior to departure. Actions have already been taken to align various Network Planning and Network Operations Control Teams under one Senior Leader. Additionally, data on early-indicator dashboards has been enhanced to highlight key operational metrics, and the airline will better integrate aircraft and Crew recovery decision making and optimization.