Bob Jordan apologized to frustrated Southwest customers, and thanked employees working to get travelers where they need to go.
Southwest Airlines pilots blamed poor planning for thousands of flights being delayed or cancelled over the weekend, resulting in massive frustration among passengers. No other airlines faced a large number of delays or cancellations.
Bob Jordan, Southwest CEO, stated:
I want everyone who is dealing with the problems we’ve been facing, whether you haven’t been able to get to where you need to go or you’re one of our heroic Employees caught up in a massive effort to stabilize the airline, to know is that we’re doing everything we can to return to a normal operation.
And please also hear that I’m truly sorry.
Here’s why this giant puzzle is taking us several days to solve. Southwest is the largest carrier in the country, not only because of our value and our values, but because we build our flight schedule around communities, not hubs. So, we’re the largest airline in 23 of the top 25 travel markets in the U.S.
Cities where large numbers of scheduled flights simultaneously froze as record bitter cold brought challenges for all airlines.
Our network is highly complex and the operation of the airline counts on all the pieces, especially aircraft and crews remaining in motion to where they’re planned to go. With our large fleet of airplanes and flight crews out of position in dozens of locations. And after days of trying to operate as much of our full schedule across the busy holiday weekend, we reached a decision point to significantly reduce our flying to catch up.
We’re focused on safely getting all of the pieces back into position to end this rolling struggle. You know, I have nothing but pride and respect for the efforts of the people of Southwest who are showing up in every way. The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well, 99 percent of the time; but clearly, we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what’s happening right now.
I’m apologizing to them daily and they’ll be hearing more about our specific plans to ensure the challenges that they’ve faced the past few days will not be part of our future.