Last week’s super-powerful winter storm “Storm Elliott” paralyzed the U.S. civil aviation industry “once in decades” during the Christmas holiday week.

According to FlightAware, a flight information tracking tool, more than 17,000 flights were canceled across the United States from December 21 to 26. Fortunately, after the passage of the extreme cold air, all airlines have returned to more than 80% of normal near Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Only Southwest Airlines is an anomaly: the number of canceled flights has increased, and the entire airline has collapsed from five days before Christmas to three days after Christmas and is still paralyzed.

People in Silicon Valley who have been to SJC at San Jose Airport in recent days are familiar with this scene: Passengers crowded the departure hall, and the queue even lined up outside the terminal; unclaimed luggage piled up in the carousel area, and there was chaos everywhere.

At Nashville International Airport in Tennessee, Southwest Airlines even “outsourced” customer service to the police. A video uploaded on the evening of December 27 showed a police officer threatening passengers who had nowhere to go due to flight cancellations, “Southwest called us and told us to come. You don’t have a valid ticket. If you don’t leave, I will arrest you!”

The “grand occasions” at airports around the world can be said to be the fault of Southwest Airlines. According to incomplete statistics, Southwest Airlines canceled an average of 2,500 or more flights in a single day within three days, and did not resume until the weekend. According to data from the FlightAware platform, since the Christmas weekend, most of the canceled flights in the United States are Southwest Airlines; starting from the 28th, only Southwest Airlines is still canceling flights in the United States.

This isn’t the first time Southwest’s system-wide outage has resulted in flight cancellations. Southwest has experienced a similar situation in October 2021, but the degree is not as exaggerated as this time. Disappointing passengers again and again, and it’s still the Christmas holiday when everyone goes home to reunite… What happened to Southwest Airlines?

Based on the information disclosed by several people in the civil aviation industry and employees of Southwest Airlines, try to restore the reasons behind the Southwest paralysis.

The culprit: an ancient, outdated rostering system

There is no doubt that winter storm Elliott is the fuse of this great paralysis. On December 21, a historic extratropical bomb cyclone formed over North America, and both the United States and Canada issued blizzard warnings. Beginning on December 23, many major cities in North America have entered the snowstorm range. On Christmas Day from 21st to 25th, more than 10,000 flights were delayed or canceled.

However, the old crew scheduling platform of Southwest Airlines is the core reason for this major paralysis. Many civil aviation workers, including anonymous Southwest Airlines employees on the Internet, said that Southwest Airlines has been using an extremely old back-end system, especially the crew scheduling platform. The system is very old and the rules are very exaggerated.

Specifically, general airlines need to look at their real-time systems or FAA public data to know where the captain and flight attendants are. This logic is very simple, but Southwest does not do this, but uses a very outdated “preview + manual recording” system:

After Southwest schedules the flight crew, it will automatically move the location to the destination of the flight; if the flight is diverted, delayed or canceled, the Southwest system cannot automatically update the location of the crew, and it is necessary to manually confirm the flight status and then manually modify it. When heavy delays and flight cancellations are caused by snowstorms in various places, Southwest employees have to manually track and modify a lot, resulting in a serious shortage of manpower, unable to track the latest flight status and modify it in time.

The snowball got bigger and bigger, and finally there were serious information errors on the scheduling platform, none of which was accurate. The whole system is completely “failed”. For example, the flight from Los Angeles is sold out, a large number of passengers have checked in, their luggage has been collected, and the Southwest system has also arranged for the crew—and the whole crew is still thousands of miles away in New York, Dallas, and Denver. , there is only one captain on the scene, of course there is no way to fly.

Even more outrageous is yet to come.

In the company call on December 28, COO Andrew Watterson admitted the above situation, and because the information error was too serious, the system was completely unusable, so the company had to urgently notify all crew members and ask them to report their current location.

And what should be the method of return? Employees log into the system to report by themselves? Send a text message? Fill out an online form? All overrated Southwest Airlines. The so-called self-return means asking all crew members to call “one” phone number. Southwest Airlines not only cannot use the automatic scheduling platform, but also has extremely limited manual administrative capabilities. While passengers lined up at the airport to go to heaven, tens of thousands of flight crew members across the country made the same phone call to report the location, and both sides waited until the end of time.

Some employees even waited up to 23 hours for the phone to be connected, and the scheduling platform was seriously out of order, which not only made it impossible for the company to know the exact location of the employees, but even caused “derivative disasters” – the US regulatory agency FAA stipulates that civil aviation crews work for a certain period of time , you must take a forced rest before continuing to fly. Usually, the airline system can automatically count the working hours of employees, and automatically book a hotel at the current location after overtime.

However, Southwest’s backstage system was severely paralyzed. Not only could the scattered flight crew not be able to go to work, they couldn’t even stay in a hotel. If they couldn’t book a room, these employees couldn’t calculate their mandatory rest time, let alone work. According to people familiar with the matter, Southwest employees completely abandoned the company’s system in those two days, and many crew members paid for hotel bookings themselves, although they didn’t know if they would be able to reimburse them later.

In addition to the system, Southwest Airlines angered a large number of employees just a few days before the collapse, and the old and new hatreds of course exacerbated the system paralysis.

After December, the United States is facing a “tripledemic” (Tripledemic): the new crown, influenza, and RSV (respiratory fusion virus) are simultaneously pandemic. Many people are sick at home, and Southwest Airlines is not spared. The content of the company letter on December 21 was that Chris Johnson, vice president of Southwest Airlines, issued a State of Operational Emergency order at Denver Airport.

He said that too many people took sick leave and personal leave, which led to a shortage of personnel. The company had to temporarily modify the leave rules of Denver Airport employees. After taking sick leave and returning to work, a diagnosis certificate must be issued, and the doctor must be seen in person, and the remote doctor is not counted, otherwise he will be fired directly; If the approved personal leave is rejected, all employees who ask for leave will automatically return to work, and those who do not come to work on time will be directly fired; if the number of voluntary overtime workers is not enough, the company will force them to work overtime, and employees who do not work overtime will also be fired.

This letter exploded as soon as it was mailed.

Denver employees who have taken sick and personal leave simply do not come to work. It is rumored that at least 100 ground staff at Denver Airport resigned from the 21st to the 22nd. Considering that Denver is Southwest Airlines’ largest stronghold, the consequences of angering ground staff can be imagined. The most outrageous thing was this flight: the flight from Tampa to Denver had to fly back to Tampa even though it had arrived in Denver because of the Denver ground staff strike.

Restart again

The already difficult progress of resuming work was hit hard again and again, and finally all efforts were wasted. Southwest Airlines’ current plan is to cancel all flights and “restart”, because there is no other way to restart the background system except to clear it. This is why more and more Southwest Airlines flight cancellations began on the 26th, and the backlog of passengers and luggage became more and more serious. The “grand events” that Silicon Valley friends saw at SJC were just a drop in the bucket. After all, Southwest Airlines is the airport with the highest traffic in the United States, and SJC does not even rank in the top ten.

On the 26th, an anonymous user claiming to be an employee posted an explanation in the Southwest Airlines unofficial discussion forum on Reddit to let everyone know more about the extent of the collapse of Southwest Airlines and how to arrange travel next. This article has been deleted, but the original text is as follows:

• This time of paralysis, the fuse was indeed the winter storm, but the paralysis to such an extent was entirely the fault of Southwest Airlines. If the Southwest customer service also tells you that it is because of the storm, it is a lie (actually the company’s statement).
• The main cause of the paralysis was the complete failure of the crew scheduling software, and manual scheduling by calling did not work. “If we had better technology and didn’t have to make phone calls, this problem would have been solved a long time ago.”
• If travelers are stranded, there are alternative transportation options – leaving the airport directly is the fastest way, so don’t hesitate.
• Luggage can not be checked, because no one can guarantee where the luggage will appear. At present, checked luggage can be described as a disaster. If any checked luggage is lost, it may take at least a month or more to find it.
• Don’t wait for the Southwest to recover, and don’t take chances: flights will be canceled within 3 days; within 4 to 7 days, it is “possible” to fly according to the schedule; after 7 days, it should return to normal.

Reddit netizens also helped with ideas: “Stuck at the airport and have nothing to do? Go to the luggage carousel to find unclaimed luggage. If there is a phone number on it, tell the owner where the luggage is now.”

After learning about the details of the crash, many netizens said that they don’t know much about the technology of the civil aviation industry. They never thought that airlines in the 21st century would be paralyzed by such an outdated scheduling system. What makes netizens even more angry is that Southwest outsources for the same reason again and again, and finally it is the employees who post anonymously to learn the truth.

In an interview with the US media, COO Andrew Watterson also had to admit that the company’s system is too old: “We have enough planes, but there is a problem with the scheduling software. Our technology cannot immediately and accurately match the crew and the flight.” Watterson will The backstage system of Southwest Airlines is described as a house of cards—any small problem in a small place will cause the house of cards to collapse instantly. “Just when the problem was about to be solved, a new problem occurred…we had to reset the system.”

The debacle prevented millions of people across the United States from returning home before Christmas, and it also caused embarrassment to Southwest Airlines executives. They keep saying “to solve system problems”, but the follow-up is like a “wolf is coming” story.

Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Union, said in an interview with CNN, “We have been suffering from the same problem for the past year and a half. Crashes of different sizes have become more frequent, but in fact, as long as the IT system and process are done well, it can be solved.” According to He knew that Southwest’s back office system hadn’t been changed since the 1990s.