Southwest CEO Recommends Employees to Work Together in the Face of Mass Cancellations

Virginia KrutaDecember 27, 2022

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan challenged employees to pull together in the face of thousands upon thousands of cancellations and delays that left travelers stranded in various airports throughout the country.

According to a report Jordan posted a message to airline workers via entertainment website TMZ as more reports about stranded travellers continued to pour in. “We’ve got to get out of this. We’ve got to get to the point where we’re reliable and we get our Customers, our Crews, our aircraft, everything on track,” He stated.

Southwest currently operates on approximately one-third of its scheduled flights. Southwest has pledged to continue this trend. “honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation” For travelers who have to change their plans.

“We had a tough day today,” Jordan said The Wall Street Journal Monday night “In all likelihood we’ll have another tough day tomorrow as we work our way out of this. This is the largest-scale event that I’ve ever seen.”

The airline has been struggling to regain its footing since a winter storm gripped much of the country just before Christmas — but the disruption brought on by the severe weather threw Southwest’s scheduling system into chaos, and they have yet to fully recover.

So many flights have been canceled — over 12,000 since December 23 — that the U.S. Department of Transportation announced a plan to investigate the airline’s compliance with its posted customer service policy.

“USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service,” The department took to Twitter via its official account. “The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”

USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service. The Department will investigate whether Southwest was able to cancel and if it is following its customer service policy.

— TransportationGov (@USDOT) December 27, 2022

Pete Buttigieg (Transport Secretary) added “I’m tracking closely & will have more to say about this tomorrow.”

Southwest Airlines representative Jay McVay said After the initial weather-related cancellations the main problem was getting pilots to the right places for the remaining flights.

“With those [cancellations], you end up with flight crews and airplanes that are out [of] place and not in the cities that they need to be in to continue to run our operations — that is ultimately exactly how we ended up where we are,” He stated. “It’s trying to get our flight crews back into cities where they need to be to operate our flight schedules and then reaccommodate everyone that we can.”