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Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

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Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#51

Post by ProjectArcturis »

mitchell_h wrote: post #38
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #33

A related question: can Southwest ever fully recover from this? Their reputation had taken such a hit that many loyal customers will hesitate to fly with them again, and even more fairweather customers will permanently cross Southwest off their list of carriers to consider flying with. Their stock price is only down ~10% since the meltdown, which seems extremely optimistic to me.

Yes. I'm a very frequent flyer, and used to be far more frequent. No one, and I mean no one, flys southwest because it's their choice. "Southwest is the greyhound of the sky" is a well known phrase. You fly southwest because it's slightly better than being cramped on 3 legs of a 50-60 seat commuter jet. Your home airport dictates which airline you take. Unless another airline steps up and takes some of the routes & p…

I would rank SW roughly in the middle:

Alaska Hawaiian [Delta American United Southwest] (rough tie here) Frontier Spirit

It depends on what you value. If you always fly first class, of course SW is worse. SW does offer a lot of direct flights that no other airlines offer. For me saving several hours in not changing planes is worth a slightly worse flight experience.

Also SW doesn't gouge you when cancelling or changing flights, unlike all the others.

Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#52

Post by mitchell_h »

kgermino wrote: post #48
mitchell_h wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'm a very frequent flyer, and used to be far more frequent. No one, and I mean no one, flys southwest because it's their choice. "Southwest is the greyhound of the sky" is a well known phrase. You fly southwest because it's slightly better than being cramped on 3 legs of a 50-60 seat commuter jet. Your home airport dictates which airline you take. Unless another airline steps up and takes some of the routes & p…

Are you on one of the coasts? In the Midwest I know a ton of business travelers (>1 trip/month) who default to Southwest. The weekly travelers tend to prefer the legacy carriers if they're available (so I'm sure there's something to your point even here) but IME Southwest rules the monthly/short notice flyers around me.

Home airport is STL, I normally fly to the coasts.

Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#53

Post by mastercheif »

thomasjudge wrote: post #42

Fun fact I found in an NYT article and LinkedIn: The current CEO Bob Jordan started at Southwest in 1988 as a computer programmer. From 2006-2008 he was EVP of Strategy and Technology

FWIW, a SouthWest pilot with 35 YOE at the company placed most of the blame on the previous CEO's lack of investment in operations in chase of shareholder profits.

The pilot gave the current CEO Bob Jordan (who started in early 2022) a vote of confidence and stated that he has strongly signaled his intention to improve the state of SW's systems, but obviously was unable to do so before this meltdown.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/SouthwestAirlines/comments/zxg6op/t...

Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#54

Post by NegativeK »

mitchell_h wrote: post #38
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #33

A related question: can Southwest ever fully recover from this? Their reputation had taken such a hit that many loyal customers will hesitate to fly with them again, and even more fairweather customers will permanently cross Southwest off their list of carriers to consider flying with. Their stock price is only down ~10% since the meltdown, which seems extremely optimistic to me.

Yes. I'm a very frequent flyer, and used to be far more frequent. No one, and I mean no one, flys southwest because it's their choice. "Southwest is the greyhound of the sky" is a well known phrase. You fly southwest because it's slightly better than being cramped on 3 legs of a 50-60 seat commuter jet. Your home airport dictates which airline you take. Unless another airline steps up and takes some of the routes & p…

> No one, and I mean no one, flys southwest because it's their choice.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I don't fly SW except to save money, but everyone else I've spoken to with an opinion on airlines loves to say how much they love the carrier.

Coworkers and I went to look at the sea of unclaimed bags yesterday, and I mentioned that SW has drastically underpaid ground crews and have flight crews sleeping in crew rooms in airports, and they said that they'd repeatedly heard how much flight crews enjoy working for the company.

I really don't understand the appeal, but it's definitely out there.

Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#55

Post by ethbr0 »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #7

Basically what I read was the former CEO was accountant educated and focused on stock price and financials and ignored system upgrades for like a decade. That coupled with their decentralized nature of operating (no hubs or star pattern) the recent storms caused their systems to not “know” where people or planes were even though the people knew where they were. That knowledge is the critical feature because hours of…

Not sure it's as cut and dry as "CFO becomes CEO and overly focuses on financials" in Southwest's case.

In 2021, Gary Kelly (former CFO/CEO) announced his retirement and picked Bob Jordan (CS trained, having previously worked on the AirTran integration) to take over as CEO, which seems a realization that Southwest has some serious technical debt to address.

All businesses have highest priorities at a given point in time.

In Southwest's early years, they were legal and operational, hence Herb Kelleher.

2000-2020, I can't say financials weren't top of the list, as Southwest migrated off its older plane models.

2020+, maybe they're technical.

A good company picks the CEO it needs for the moment, not always one particular type.

Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#56

Post by kod »

mitchell_h wrote: post #38
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #33

A related question: can Southwest ever fully recover from this? Their reputation had taken such a hit that many loyal customers will hesitate to fly with them again, and even more fairweather customers will permanently cross Southwest off their list of carriers to consider flying with. Their stock price is only down ~10% since the meltdown, which seems extremely optimistic to me.

Yes. I'm a very frequent flyer, and used to be far more frequent. No one, and I mean no one, flys southwest because it's their choice. "Southwest is the greyhound of the sky" is a well known phrase. You fly southwest because it's slightly better than being cramped on 3 legs of a 50-60 seat commuter jet. Your home airport dictates which airline you take. Unless another airline steps up and takes some of the routes & p…

> No one, and I mean no one, flys southwest because it's their choice.

Everyone in my family preferred to fly southwest (at least before this round of incidents). Among other things, this was based on a history of better customer service especially in extenuating circumstances. They've been at the top of e.g. JD power customer satisfaction rankings for years.

If you're trying to say no one flies economy because it's their choice... I could certainly afford not to, but I _choose_ otherwise.

Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#57

Post by mastercheif »

kgermino wrote: post #48
mitchell_h wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'm a very frequent flyer, and used to be far more frequent. No one, and I mean no one, flys southwest because it's their choice. "Southwest is the greyhound of the sky" is a well known phrase. You fly southwest because it's slightly better than being cramped on 3 legs of a 50-60 seat commuter jet. Your home airport dictates which airline you take. Unless another airline steps up and takes some of the routes & p…

Are you on one of the coasts? In the Midwest I know a ton of business travelers (>1 trip/month) who default to Southwest. The weekly travelers tend to prefer the legacy carriers if they're available (so I'm sure there's something to your point even here) but IME Southwest rules the monthly/short notice flyers around me.

I can anecdotally back this statement up via experience with frequent flyers based in Nashville.

Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#58

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

logosmonkey wrote: post #44
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this age of more or less fully network connected devices, this kind of a setup seems archaic in the extreme, probably likely to be some hangover from the 70s or 80s.

Apparently Southwest is one of the biggest offenders in the airline industry when it comes to not investing in their IT infrastructure. You can only get away with that sort of debt for so long.

If that's true, and I have no reason to doubt it, the blame will fall squarely on the team who were asking for IT investment, and not the leadership who said no to them.

Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#59

Post by ProjectArcturis »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #33

A related question: can Southwest ever fully recover from this? Their reputation had taken such a hit that many loyal customers will hesitate to fly with them again, and even more fairweather customers will permanently cross Southwest off their list of carriers to consider flying with. Their stock price is only down ~10% since the meltdown, which seems extremely optimistic to me.

Fully? No. Mostly, yes. They've definitely taken a hit, but most fliers have pretty short memories. Remember when this happened to Delta a few years ago? Most of the alternatives to SW are nearly as bad. In a year nearly everyone will be back to just choosing the cheapest flight.

Re: Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

#60

Post by unwise-exe »

grantc wrote: post #29
hrunt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I used to work for a large company trying to fill the void [huge gap in the market for good aviation scheduling software], and our software was damn good too. SW was one of the airlines interested, we would demo it exactly like the scenario today, but it was "too expensive" and they stayed on their homebuilt stuff." This is a common situation in any industry. A company has a solution it self-developed in its infan…

It can be cost-driven, but it's just as likely to be complexity-gated (w/ cost frequently being implementation driven and a proxy for complexity). The cost comes from actually unwinding a gnarly legacy system (that may be less than well understood) and making the successor system work. Also, Gall's law has entered the chat: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that work…

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