Southwest: Normal flight operations to resume Friday

DALLAS — Southwest Airlines said it expects to return to normal operations Friday after slashing about two-thirds of its schedule, including canceling more than 2,350 flights Thursday.

Airline executives told employees that crew scheduling this week— a major cause of the meltdown — has been fixed.

Southwest is struggling to recover after being overwhelmed by a winter storm that left hundreds of pilots and flight attendants stranded out of position to operate flights.

It is likely that far more than 1 million passengers have been affected. Southwest has canceled more than 13,000 flights since its meltdown began on Dec. 22. Its planes have 143 to 175 seats and were likely nearly fully booked around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

Other airlines are back to full strength. Delta, American and United together canceled around 30 flights by late morning, according to tracker FlightAware.

Southwest’s cancellations amounted to 58% of its schedule, slightly better than in previous days. The Dallas carrier accounted for more than 95% of all canceled flights in the United States on Thursday. By Thursday afternoon, however, Southwest was showing only 39 canceled flights on Friday, according to FlightAware.

Southwest has acknowledged that it has inadequate and outdated technology that can leave flight crews out of position when bad weather strikes. But company executives told employees that problems with crew-scheduling have largely been fixed.

“Right now it looks like a pretty smooth operation as we head into this transition (Thursday) to allow us to resume operations on Friday at our normal schedule, which is a big step up,” Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told employees by video Wednesday night.

The airline has declined requests to make executives available for comment and did not provide an update about operations on its website. Its main public outreach has been to post video statements by CEO Robert Jordan and its chief commercial officer.

Jordan faces a crisis just 11 months after he became CEO, replacing longtime leader Gary Kelly. Southwest had 88 planes and 7,000 employees when Jordan joined 35 years ago. Now it has more than 700 planes and more than 60,000 employees.

“I do think the scale and the growth of the airline got ahead of the tools that we have,” Jordan said. “No fault of anybody — takes investment — and we’ll get all this done.”

Jordan didn’t give a timeline or dollar figure for that investment, or explain why the airline had not already done the work.

The federal government is investigating what happened at Southwest.

Southwest added a page to its website specifically for stranded travelers, and it invited customers to submit receipts for unexpected expenses. The airline said it would consider reimbursing “reasonable” expenses for meals, hotel rooms and alternate transportation incurred between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2. Consumer advocates criticized the use of the word “reasonable” as too vague.

Thousands of customers have been unable to reach the airline this week, as Southwest’s phone system was overwhelmed. Pilots and flight attendants also reported being put on hold for hours.