The president of the Southwest Airlines pilots union told Congress on Thursday that employees’ concerns and warnings were ignored by the company leading up to the operational meltdown that caused widespread flight cancelations and displaced millions of passengers over the holidays.
Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) testified to the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee in a hearing that featured Southwest Airlines COO Andrew Watterson, who was grilled by lawmakers over Southwest Airlines’ multiple technological and operational failures. Murray said that frontline employees had been sounding the alarm on Southwest’s outdated IT and crew scheduling processes, but management “failed to listen.”
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Southwest has a history of repetition. Unfortunately, despite many opportunities, Southwest Airlines management did not listen to its pilots and frontline employees who saw this meltdown coming,” Murray said.
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A deadly winter storm in December 2022 caused flight cancelations and delays across the airline industry, but while other major domestic carriers recovered soon after the storm passed, Southwest remained crippled for more than a week. Nearly 17,000 flights were canceled, and the company took an $800 million financial hit that resulted in a fourth quarter 2022 net loss of $220 million. Eight days passed before the airline was able to return to normal operations.
Murray identified three causes of the meltdown in his testimony, accusing Southwest leadership of failing to prepare for the winter storm, failing to modernize crew management processes and related IT systems, and failing to listen to employees.
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Asked by ranking member Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to elaborate, Murray said pilots had sounded the alarm bells “for over a decade.”
“We love our airline. And they have to be better,” he told lawmakers.
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Senators pressed COO Andrew Watterson for specifics on how Southwest Airlines is investing in technology and systems upgrades to prevent another disastrous meltdown in the future.
Watterson indicated the company will spend “millions and millions of dollars” to better prepare for severe winter weather events.
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“We need more infrastructure at airports for deicing. We need more deicing trucks. We need new technology systems with the icing. We need to weatherize our ground support equipment,” he said. “So there’s lots of work and lots of expenditures we expect to prevent this from happening again, and that will be the bulk of the effort.”