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Southwest Airlines canceled another 2,600 flights on Tuesday as the Dallas-based carrier continued to struggle to recover from the weekend’s weather impacts thanks to outdated computer systems and bad scheduling practices, insiders and experts said.
While other airlines managed to get most of their flights off the ground after the weekend chaos, Southwest’s systems for managing flight bookings and employee placement have collapsed, according to reports.
“We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT,” Captain Casey Murray, the president of the airline’s pilots union, told CNN on Monday.
“It’s phones, it’s computers, it’s processing power, it’s the programs used to connect us to airplanes — that’s where the problem lies, and it’s systemic throughout the whole airline.”
Southwest canceled a whopping 85% of its scheduled flights on Monday and accounted for 53% of all of Tuesday’s US flight cancellations as of 2 p.m. Tuesday, according to FlightAware.
CEO Bob Jordan has privately acknowledged that outdated tech played a role in creating the ongoing fracas.
