Southwest Faces Senate Hearing Following Holiday Meltdown
Excerpts from CNBC
Southwest Airlines’ chief operating officer, Andrew Watterson, will face questions from a Senate panel next Thursday about the carrier’s holiday meltdown that stranded hundreds of thousands of travelers.
Southwest said the hearing date overlapped with “a previous commitment” for CEO Bob Jordan.
Jordan, who has been CEO for a year, has vowed to win back travelers’ trust after the debacle, which led to an $800 million pretax hit last quarter and pushed it into a loss.
The Senate Commerce Committee hearing will also include testimony from Casey Murray, president of the Southwest pilots’ labor union; Sharon Pinkerton, senior vice president of legislative and regulatory policy at Airlines for America, an industry group that represents the country’s largest airlines; Paul Hudson, president of consumer rights group FlyersRights; and Clifford Winston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the committee chair, had previously said she planned to hold a hearing on flight disruptions after Southwest’s holiday travel chaos.
