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Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

thepointsguy.com

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Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Can you explain employers and schools who previously had vaccine mandates (hepatitis and measles are examples I’ve seen for schools and healthcare workers) and what makes this vaccine different? If the argument is “mandates are wrong”, we’ve had them for over 150 years. If the argument is it’s not safe, its FDA approved and has been administered over a billion times. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/vaccine-man…

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Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#92
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine this kind of thing cascades quite badly if it goes wrong, so it's not unimaginable that they just got unlucky regarding where machines are/where crews that are rested are and it collapsed from there, whereas other airlines got lucky/predicted the consequences better/had more resilient planning. (EDIT: which would match the union statement /u/hnburnsy quotes: but what was a minor temporary event for other ca…

The union explicitly denies that a sickout is occurring in that same statement you've quoted: > There are false claims of job actions by Southwest Pilots currently gaining traction on social media and making their way into mainstream news. I can say with certainty that there are no work slowdowns or sickouts either related to the recent mandatory vaccine mandate or otherwise. Under the RLA, our Union is forbidden fro…

The union explicitly has to deny this, even if it’s true, due to airline union regulations. Airline unions are restricted in what they can do.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#93
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, >Online speculation that Southwest’s new vaccine mandate has led pilots to stage a sickout is being denied by the union representing Southwest pilots. >That follows reporting on social media that some of the issues the airline is suffering could be related to that issue. A spokesperson for the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) told the Arizona Republic it was not aware of any work stoppage and woul…

If this is the result of a sickout, I assume the current administration could direct the Dept of Defense to make military pilots available to Southwest in the event of an extended availability issue with their union pilots. Not as brutal as Reagan breaking the ATC union, but supporting a common carrier in a time of crisis. I don’t believe a federal case has been heard yet where the vaccine mandate or terminating thos…

How many military pilots do you think have a current type rating on the 737? The C-40 pilots could probably transition quickly but there's only 28 C-40s in the US fleet so probably not enough pilots to make a realistic difference.

This isn't just a case of paperwork, either. A pilot can't safely operate a completely different type without training. Even if you expedite it, it's likely that resolving the industrial action will take less time.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#94
post #3

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Do you remember where you read that? Really curious! Love me some drama.

It's just a baseless rumor as far as I can see. SW says there's a staffing problem at "one location in florida," and blames weather otherwise. Meanwhile at least the SW pilot's union says "our pilots are not participating in any official or unofficial job actions." Union goes on to say the disruption is because of SW's "bad management." Given that the people who are ostensibly striking have yet to say anything, I thi…

Frankly corporate PR has just as much likelihood of being honest as a random tweet. We now live in a zero trust society.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#95

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I understand you have an axe to grind, as many of your recent posts are anti vaccination in nature. Regardless, public support is robust for the measures being taken to bring the pandemic public health crisis to a conclusion, and with regards to vaccine mandates and terminating those who refuse, so far those actions have been adjudicated as lawful. So, the current administration has to get creative when you have coho…

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> godawful side effect profiles that characterize the Covid vaccines

Can you provide some references regarding the side effect profiles of these vaccines being any worse than a typical vaccine? Genuinely interested, as from casual observation it doesn't seem to be the case.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#96
post #30

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Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly and we've already had to ask you more than once. I don't want to ban you, so it would be good if you would review the site guidelines and use the site as intended: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

You are going to ban him because what he posted doesn’t fit your narrative? You are censoring him.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southwest also operates a flight network that relies on flights making multiple stops along the way, whereas many other airlines may have more direct flights that aren’t impacted as much by distant flights being delayed. Here’s an article from the AP that mentions the “point-to-point route network” as a contributing factor in terms of a cascading failure: https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-business-travel-8abd4e0..…

To counteract this Southwest does not do red eye flights which theoretically should allow them to reset operations overnight. This does not seem to be working for some reason.

Because to reset the whole network, they need a lot more pilots than they actually have. Someone would have to fly all the planes around at night, but it can’t be the pilots who flew during the day (they need to sleep at night). Like any airline, Southwest does not keep many more pilots on the payroll than they need under normal operations.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain employers and schools who previously had vaccine mandates (hepatitis and measles are examples I’ve seen for schools and healthcare workers) and what makes this vaccine different? If the argument is “mandates are wrong”, we’ve had them for over 150 years. If the argument is it’s not safe, its FDA approved and has been administered over a billion times. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/vaccine-man…

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They haven't mandated flu shots yet. Once they see how easy it was to manipulate public opinion, wouldn't be surprised to have mandated flu shots in the near future in addition to whatever other gain-of-function research virus they accidentally release next:

https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-fu...

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can you explain employers and schools who previously had vaccine mandates (hepatitis and measles are examples I’ve seen for schools and healthcare workers) and what makes this vaccine different? If the argument is “mandates are wrong”, we’ve had them for over 150 years. If the argument is it’s not safe, its FDA approved and has been administered over a billion times. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/vaccine-man…

Most of the "vaccine mandates" provided as supporting examples for absolute COVID vaccine mandates have exclusions for those who have existing immunity.

For example, individuals who have had a laboratory-confirmed measles infection or can otherwise prove immunity do not need to be vaccinated against measles according to the CDC[1].

Over 44 million Americans have already had a laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and the science indicates that people who have recovered from infection have significant protection not inferior and perhaps superior to vaccine-based immunity[2].

The vast majority of people who have had a laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in the US can prove it as easily as people who have been vaccinated can prove they were vaccinated.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/faqs.html

[2] https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#100
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is maddening. Even if the stated goal is to “get off the mainframe” everybody deep down knows it isn’t going anywhere for 10 years. We recently had a discussion about porting from one mainframe “module” to another due to cost. I asked why we don’t just continue paying for the current module since the goal is to sunset mainframe. Everybody on the call laughed. So we will go ahead and “invest” several man years and…

I've been on the other side of this and seen too many teams neglect to fix even the simplest and most frustrating bugs in a system because they're going to rewrite it "in the next six months". Usually the rewrite is still going years later, and the actual code used in production is left to rot, holding back other teams as well.

Can you blame them? These are the same teams who typically refuse to adopt practices that would allow them to create tests and we'll encapsulated designs. So inevitably the team is once bitten twice shy about breaking production. Why be the poor bastard who introduced anything but the tiniest bugfix?
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