This week, Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan sent an e-mail update to customers concerning the Dec. 2022 “meltdown” that left passengers stranded, thousands of flights canceled, and the carrier needing a massive upgrade to its system.
In the e-mail, Jordan said the Dallas-based company “are currently budgeted to spend more than $1 billion of our annual operating plan on investments, upgrades, and maintenance of our IT systems.”
Sheldon Jacobson, an aviation researcher, data scientist and professor at University of Illinois system said he expects that there is work being done behind the scenes – even with less than a month having passed since the holiday flight cancelations.
“They propose to update their computer system, their software, their communication network. So, that if anything as difficult as what happened over the holidays occurs again, they will be prepared,” Jacobson said. “They are going to be going through and acting like another major weather event comes through on their system. Not on their primary system, but on a secondary system and they’re going to test it and they are going to exercise it, and they’re going to stretch it to the absolute maximum.”
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In the e-mail, Jordan gave a list of actions that have already been taken and what happens next.
The e-mail reads:
Immediate Actions: Following the disruption, we moved swiftly to put mitigation elements in place to further reduce the risk of future operational disruptions that could impede Customer travel plans. Some of those efforts already in progress include:
- Establishing supplemental operational staffing that can quickly mobilize to support Crew recovery efforts
- Enhancing our Crew engagement technology to efficiently communicate with large numbers of Crew Members during frequent schedule changes
- Updating and upgrading our Crew recovery system to not only solve current and future schedules, but also provide the ability to optimize established schedules as we revise them during irregular operations
Going Forward: While we have mitigated risks in the short-term, we are taking additional steps to review the events and make thoughtful recommendations on future actions.
- We've engaged a third-party global aviation consulting firm, Oliver Wyman, to complete an assessment of the event and make recommendations of additional mitigation elements for us to consider.
- Our Board of Directors appointed an Operations Review Committee that is working with management to understand the events and help oversee the Company's response.
- We commit to keep you updated as we make progress on these efforts as well as additional steps to prevent an event like this from happening again.
“Are they prepared right now? They have backups in place to be able to support a response if necessary, but their idea is much greater than a patchwork,” Jacobson said. “They are looking for a systematic transformation of their technology and their infrastructure, so that they can in fact respond as efficiently and quickly as the other airlines have shown that they can do.”
