“All this Occurred While Other Airlines had Empty Seats”
Excerpts from Lynnwood Times
“All this occurred while other airlines had empty seats,” Hudson said.
Senator Cantwell highlighted this in her opening remarks as chair of the committee.
“While bad weather can happen and is expected — and many airlines recovered quickly — Southwest stood out on its scope of the problems it faced,” Cantwell said.
Murray described Southwest as a “complex operation held together by duct tape and bailing wire.” The committee questioned Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson on why Southwest failed to act on “more than two dozen” warnings about the antiquated staff scheduling software by the Pilot’s Association.
“This isn’t a plug-and-play — it’s got to be holistic,” Watterson said. “The last domino was the crew scheduling system not functioning the way we’d like.”
Watterson went on to remark that Southwest is reviewing their options and is willing to spend more than $1.3 billion to fix and upgrade their current system.
Southwest is not only being criticized for how the critical failure was handled, but also for the dividends that were paid out that very same month.
“A lot of people suffered a lot because of this,” Cantwell said. “And you just paid out a huge dividend. So people want to know, are these guys going to invest in the technology that will make this system operational, so this will never happen again?”
Hudson described these dividends during his opening statement.
“Because US airlines are not required to pay delay compensation for domestic flights — unlike for international air travel — Southwest avoided over half a billion dollars in delay expenses,” Hudson said. “Under the current system, airlines are actually incentivized to provide bad service. Good service costs money and bad service saves money. And that money can be used for dividends, stock buybacks, and executive compensation. Southwest proudly chose to be the first airline to restore dividends, paying $428 million in dividends to shareholders in December.”
