{"id":536698,"date":"2023-01-06T19:56:12","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T16:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/southwests-holiday-travel-meltdown-to-cost-airline-400m\/"},"modified":"2023-01-06T19:56:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T16:56:12","slug":"southwests-holiday-travel-meltdown-to-cost-airline-400m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/southwests-holiday-travel-meltdown-to-cost-airline-400m\/","title":{"rendered":"#Southwest&#8217;s holiday travel meltdown to cost airline $400M"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a23d753648c5\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a23d753648c5\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/southwests-holiday-travel-meltdown-to-cost-airline-400m\/#%E2%80%9CSouthwests_holiday_travel_meltdown_to_cost_airline_400M%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Southwest&#8217;s holiday travel meltdown to cost airline $400M&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CSouthwests_holiday_travel_meltdown_to_cost_airline_400M%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Southwest&#8217;s holiday travel meltdown to cost airline $400M&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft\">\n        <\/aside>\n<p>Southwest Airlines expects a nearly $1B hit to its bottom line after a winter storm and <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"4\" title=\"Technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">technology<\/a> meltdown led to nearly 17,000 canceled flights and stranded hundreds of thousands of holiday <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">travel<\/a>ers.<\/p>\n<p>The cancellations will result in a pretax hit of $725 million to $825 million in the fourth quarter from lost revenue plus extra costs, including reimbursements for travelers and premium pay for employees, Southwest said Friday in a regulatory filing.<\/p>\n<p>The storm and slow recovery was a devastating turn financially and\u00a0reputationally\u00a0for the Dallas-based carrier, which\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/travel-dallas-air-airlines-9478aeeec8260b1b999123f29cbdfe92\">led all US airlines in profit<\/a>\u00a0during the first nine months of 2022, a year of recovery for the pandemic-battered airline industry.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0massive disruptions\u00a0started with a winter storm that hit much of the country before Christmas. They snowballed when Southwest\u2019s outdated crew-scheduling technology was overwhelmed, leaving crews and planes out of position to operate flights. Managers and a cadre of volunteer employees at company headquarters were forced to manually reassign pilots and flight attendants to flights.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/southwest-holiday-meltdown1.jpg?w=1024\" alt=\"A display last week shows Southwest's cancelled flights.\" class=\"wp-image-25263592\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/southwest-holiday-meltdown1.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1535 1536w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/southwest-holiday-meltdown1.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all 1024w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/southwest-holiday-meltdown1.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=512 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><figcaption>A display last week shows Southwest\u2019s cancelled flights.<\/figcaption><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It took Southwest eight days to recover just before the New Year\u2019s Day weekend, while other major airlines were up and running quickly after the storm passed.<\/p>\n<p>Southwest said in the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it canceled more than 16,700 flights between Dec. 21 and Dec. 31, causing a loss of $400 million to $425 million in revenue. In early December, before the meltdown, Southwest projected fourth-quarter revenue would rise by up to 17% over the same period in 2019, before the pandemic.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignright\">\n    <\/aside>\n<p>The airline said that expenses increased due to reimbursements to customers for out-of-pocket costs \u2014 the company has promised to cover \u201creasonable\u201d bills for hotel rooms, meals and alternate transportation \u2014 along with the estimated value of\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/business-dallas-e5d8d63aa7f0c665f963ca13f999ea89\">frequent-flyer points<\/a>\u00a0it offered to customers, and premium pay and additional compensation for employees.<\/p>\n<p>Just last month, Southwest announced that it would revive\u00a0dividends\u00a0for shareholders, which were suspended after the pandemic devastated the airline industry in early 2020. The airline estimates it will pay out $428 million to shareholders this month. US airlines were barred from paying dividends or buying back their own stock until October as a condition of taking $54 billion in federal pandemic aid. Southwest received more than $7 billion in aid.<\/p>\n<p>Since it resumed a normal schedule on Dec. 30, Southwest\u2019s cancellations and flight delays have dropped sharply, roughly in line with other major airlines. The company is working on\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/business-texas-arizona-california-da3b72f2350b0f77498f7f67316facb5\">repairing its damaged reputation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/southwest-holiday-meltdown.jpg?w=1024\" alt=\"Southwest Airlines jet\" class=\"wp-image-25263577\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/southwest-holiday-meltdown.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1535 1536w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/southwest-holiday-meltdown.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all 1024w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/southwest-holiday-meltdown.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=512 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><figcaption>Southwest said the cancellations will result in a pretax hit of $725 million to $825 million from lost revenue plus extra costs.<\/figcaption><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know how many times I have, and can, apologize to our customers, but it\u2019s not enough because we messed up,\u201d CEO Robert Jordan said in an interview Thursday. \u201cBut the storm was historic in the number of places it hit, the length of time it stayed, the temperatures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jordan said the company spends about $1 billion a year on technology and is reviewing how systems performed before making decisions on IT spending priorities.<\/p>\n<p>Company officials have disputed union leaders\u2019 claims that the company hasn\u2019t invested enough to update technology, although they concede that the crew-scheduling systems did not get as much attention as other IT spending including aircraft-maintenance operations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne could criticize us for prioritizing ground operations and technical operations over crew operations when we started, but at the time that seemed like a proper sequence. Obviously it bit us in retrospect,\u201d Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson said last week, \u201cbut there was significant modernization work going on.\u201d\n                        <\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2023\/01\/06\/southwests-holiday-travel-meltdown-to-cost-airline-400m\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Southwest&#8217;s holiday travel meltdown to cost airline $400M&#8221; Southwest Airlines expects a nearly $1B hit to its bottom line after a winter storm and technology meltdown led to nearly 17,000 canceled flights and stranded hundreds of thousands of holiday travelers. The cancellations will result in a pretax hit of $725 million to $825 million in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":536699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/southwest-meltdown-comp.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&1673004663&w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[138101,70908,73017,70237,80998,76847],"class_list":["post-536698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-1-6-23","tag-airlines","tag-airplane-meltdowns","tag-corporate-earnings","tag-holiday-travel","tag-southwest-airlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}