Southwest airlines hub cities software#

“This new hassle-free service from Paine Field will allow Alaska passengers to start their vacation before they even leave.

Service will be provided by the airline’s Boeing 737 fleet, Alaska said.

Service from Paine Field to Anchorage, which began last year, is second at roughly 1,400 miles. They're buying tickets on other airlines.At nearly 2,700 miles, it will be Alaska’s longest flight from the Everett airport. They're doing their best to get you where you need to go. 'They're saying they're buying meals for people, they're putting people up in hotel rooms. 'From a PR perspective, they're out in front,' she says. So our goal is to take a quick breather at the hotel and then pick it up again so we can be there Thursday night,' Lenz says.Īs badly as things have gone for both Southwest and its customers, the company has owned up to its problems, says Becker. 'There's a place about halfway through in Illinois that's 13 hours from here and 13 hours from from Denver. 'But that's when everything started to get canceled,' he says - including his Tuesday flight.įinally, the family decided to rent a car and drive back to Denver - a 26-hour drive. The agent reassured him, and even moved the flight to the 27th. He asked, 'Do you think this is going to be resolved by the time we fly out?' So, he used an app on his phone to rebook - for Dec. He was on the phone for hours, but couldn't reach an agent. Just before they departed for the airport, Lenz checked his phone app 'to make sure everything was good.' The family flew out on the 21st, and planned to fly home on Christmas Eve. The family was visiting New York City, where they were celebrating together - a wedding anniversary and his daughter's birthday. One of those passengers, Skyler Lenz, lives with his wife and two young children in Denver. Our hearts go out to all of the passengers.' Mike Santoro, the vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association that represents the airline's more than 10,000 pilots, said on CNN that the union was 'tired of apologizing for Southwest. 'So when there's bad weather, everything tends to get out of position.'Īs a result, backfilling can be a nightmare.Ĭapt. There's a flight crew change somewhere in there, and then it flies one or two more legs across the country and spend the night,' Bangs says.Īs a result, 'when you get a weather situation like this, you have all sorts of pilots and flight attendants that can no longer get to where they need to be, because quite often flight crews are not based at the same city or they don't live at the same city that they're based out of,' she says. With Southwest, however, 'their pilots take off in the morning from one city, then they fly to two, three, four, five, six other cities. But in inclement weather, it can cause problems, says Kathleen Bangs, a former commercial airline pilot and spokesperson for FlightAware.ĭelta's big hub, for example, is Atlanta, while United filters many of its flights through Chicago. In fair weather, it's a system that has worked well for them. 'Southwest has always been a laggard when it comes to technology.'Īnother key factor is Southwest's heavily reliance on shorter, point-to-point flights, rather than a 'hub and spoke' model of many of its largest competitors. 'It's not only their customer-facing systems, it's their crew scheduling and so on,' Becker says.

Southwest airlines hub cities software#

Helane Becker, an aviation analyst with Cowen, an investment bank and financial services company, says Southwest needs to bring those tools, in the form of internal software systems, up to date. The company said the severe weather had 'forced daily changes to our flight schedule at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity.' 'We recognize falling short and sincerely apologize.' 'And our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning,' Southwest said. In a statement issued Monday, the airline said the 'continuing challenges' to its operations impacting its customers are 'unacceptable.' 'Southwest needs to be held accountable for such a colossal failure,' McClain says.