Senate Dems Push Southwest CEO for Answers on Christmas Meltdown

15 senators including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker. sent a letter To Southwest Airlines This week, CEO Bob Jordan demanded answers from the airline about how it managed 2022 holiday travel disruptions that left thousands of passengers stranded at airports.

These questions demand details on the cause of the meltdown. Southwest’s scheduling software, which was overloaded with crew members, buckled due to all the flight changes. Due to severe winter weather in the U.S., and high holiday travel demand, mass cancellations were combined with flight changes that caused stress for U.S. airlines. There are thousands of flights.

Southwest’s problems worsened after the storm. To try and reset its operations, it cancelled a lot of its flights, causing havoc for hundreds of thousands of customers.

“Although winter storm Elliott disrupted flights across the country, every other airline operating in the United States managed to return to a regular flight schedule shortly thereafter — except Southwest,” This is what the Thursday letter reads.

The airline Cancelled Between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, there were nearly 17,000 flights. According to the company, the financial meltdown would have a cost of $725 million to $825 million in its fourth quarter.

“We appreciate the concerns expressed in the letter from the Senators and share in the commitment to ensuring Southwest’s Customers are properly cared for and that actions are taken to mitigate risks of this happening again,” Southwest made the statement in a statement. “We hope the recent refunds, reimbursements of expenses, and goodwill gestures to our Customers and Employees demonstrate that we want to go above and beyond in earning their trust once again.”

The senators also demanded information from the airline about compensating passengers affected by Southwest cancellations. This included refunds on tickets, baggage returns and reimbursements for alternate travel arrangements.

Southwest is still Refund requests from impacted customers will be reviewed.

The letter by the senators also highlights Southwest’s use of funds. It claims it neglected to update companywide system that were long out of date.

“Southwest has long known that its software was outdated, and the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association had warned that such a debacle was inevitable unless Southwest invested in new scheduling systems,” According to the letter. “Instead of making those investments, Southwest distributed over $1.8 billion in dividends to its shareholders and bought back over $11 billion in its shares between 2011 and 2020.”

Sanders has previously criticized Southwest on Twitter for its use of Twitter. “corporate greed,” It is notable that $5.6 BILLION of the $7 BILLION in Covid relief was used by the airline to buy back stock shares for shareholders instead of investing in its internal infrastructure.

The senators gave Jordan until February 2, so that they could respond to their questions.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee has already indicated that she will hold a hearing about Southwest’s meltdown.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

Correction: Southwest was sent the letter by senators on Thursday. An earlier version of the letter misstated the date.