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Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

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

#361

Post by londons_explore »

smsm42 wrote: post #168
hnburnsy wrote: post #36

Comment from the Southwest Pilots Union... >SWA has claimed that the immediate causes of this weekend’s meltdown were staffing at Jacksonville Center and weather in the southeast U.S., but what was a minor temporary event for other carriers devastated Southwest Airlines because our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure. Our operation and our frontline employees have…

> our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure I somehow notice a lot of this lately, in many different areas. I wonder if there isn't a common cause behind those. Is it just covid or something bigger?

The root cause is because "anti price gouging" laws are being enforced.

Previously, if there was a shortage of say plane brake discs, the wholesaler would jack the price up 10x for the last 3 sets. That would lead to one of the 4 customers who wanted to buy them to say "nah, it's too expensive, we don't need it that badly".

The person who wouldn't get a set was probably the guy restocking the spare parts shelf, while the people who really really needed those parts right now so a plane can takeoff got them.

In todays world, it's illegal to jack the price, one customer buys all the cheap stock (one to use, 2 as spares cos they heard about a shortage), and now 2 planes can't take off.

The same happens for thousands of other products all across the world. The end result is the people who really need goods can't get them, while others sit on piles of stock 'lucky we bought some just before they ran out!'. Endgame: The economy grinds to a halt over tiny shortages everywhere.

The proper solution is to allow and encourage price gouging again, and have a PR campaign to explain to the public how changing this law really is in their interests, even if it appears on the surface that paying $100 for a flashlight in an emergency can't be good for anyone.

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

#362

Post by hodgesrm »

subsaharancoder wrote: post #164
hodgesrm wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southwest runs 3 to 4K commercial flights per day, which is about 1 in 7 commercial flights overall in the US. They depend on aircraft doing many short hops over the course of a single day: 7 or 8 is not uncommon. When things go bad it tends to disrupt the system very badly. These numbers come from the US DOT ontime database. You can access the data in ClickHouse at https://github.demo.trial.altinity.cloud:8443 (user…

>You can access the data in ClickHouse at https://github.demo.trial.altinity.cloud:8443 (user=demo, password=demo). This is a public instance running on Altinity.Cloud. All I get is a white screen with the word "Ok"

My apologies. Here is the correct URL. It's the ClickHouse web UI.

https://github.demo.trial.altinity.cloud:8443/play?user=demo

For instructions on use, check out the following blog article.

https://altinity.com/blog/connecting-to-altinity-cloud-with-...

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

#363

Post by toyg »

smsm42 wrote: post #290
kortilla wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only “a failure” if the loss from this is worse than all of the money they have saved over the years by running so lean. This type of event is the obvious possible downside that is well known when you structure a company this way. It’s not that events like this aren’t expected, it’s that prepping for them costs more than the loss from not being able to absorb them.

The money they earned in the past are already spent and forgotten. The failure is now. So for the people who got the bonuses in the past it may be worth it (that's probably why they did it), but for the company as an ongoing concern it certainly isn't. It's like eating a lot of unhealthy foods and later getting sick - maybe some people consider it worth it, but most people kinda regret it when they get sick.

The thing is, a company isn't a person. In fact, LTDs were effectively invented in order to dissociate company lifecycles from human ones.

So, from a purely rational perspective, if the company makes $100m profit over 10 years then gets "sick", well, job done - you just start another one and carry on. Money doesn't care for future consequences; if anything, inflation puts pressure on disposing of profits quickly while postponing losses (and risk), even if doing so will eventually kill the company.

Extreme "financialization" of our ways of production has given us great rates of efficiency and innovation, at the expense of long-term stability.

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

#364

Post by throwawaycuriou »

briffle wrote: post #101
nradov wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if an employee is fired for cause the employer is required to pay out accrued vacation time.

That depends on what state you are in. Not every state requires it. But I’m guessing the pilots union agreement includes it.

Indeed it does depend on the state. Surprisingly inconsistent in myriad ways across the US. https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/pto-payout-l...

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

#365

Post by hef19898 »

WalterBright wrote: post #356
hef19898 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single AC fleets mean an airline has somewhat of a single point of failure. If the issue at hand is caused by that point of failure, sure recovery will be harder. In most other cases it makes it actually easier, at least on paper. No need to get crews to certain planes, just a crew to a plane, as every crew is certified on any plane.

And people wonder why Boeing made such an effort to not need different pilot training for the MAX.

I wondered always why people wondered. Airbus went to great length to make cross-certification of pilots possible for that very reason.

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

#366

Post by toyg »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #332
dotancohen wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't forget all of the future losses by losing the trust of both the customers and the employees. Who's going to remember this? Even a large percentage of the stranded passengers are likely to fly Southwest again to save $36 on a flight. > This assumes that they can absorb these losses. If they couldn't, then they could very very likely receive a bailout or other assistance. It is the existence of these safetynets…

> Who's going to remember this? Even a large percentage of the stranded passengers are likely to fly Southwest again to save $36 on a flight. You can see how this is a problem, right? This essentially means the market is not working as it should - instead of improving quality of service, it makes people absorb the bad experience, ad infinitum. The market is not able to deliver feedback to the companies, who instead r…

> This essentially means the market is not working as it should

Actually the market works just fine: it transfers price pressures efficiently across all participants - including human beings. It's society that doesn't work anymore, because it has now lost any meaning of 'value' beyond monetary terms for most of the population. Most consumers now cannot choose not to minimize expenditure: either because they cannot afford it, or because they simply don't know how to look at experiences through a lens different from "what is the price".

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

#367

Post by dabernathy89 »

downandout wrote: post #250
thepasswordis wrote: post #232

There is currently a major outage at a major part of the infrastructure of our nation, and nobody believes anybody about why. The airline is saying it's something to do with weather, but somehow they're the only airline effected. Everybody online seems to the think it's some sort of labor strike, but the union denies this and nobody can find anywhere where people are planning this. And yet thousands of people are stu…

The most likely explanation is here [1]. Pilots (and apparently some air traffic controllers) are doing a sickout to protest vaccine mandates, presumably to make the powers that be understand just how difficult they can make things for the country if they proceed with intended mass firings. But the sickout is technically illegal, so nobody will acknowledge it. That is why you won't see a clear explanation of this inc…

> unless they take something that many consider to be quite dangerous.

Of course, zero pushback on this nonsense idea

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

#368

Post by Cederfjard »

roenxi wrote: post #346
smt88 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should these people be employed if they make choices I disagree with This is a disingenuous way to frame it. The current govt is anti-Nazi, but it's never tried to mandate that all employees found to be Nazis must be fired. The reason vaccines are an issue of employment (only at larger employers, by the way) is that unvaccinated people endanger their coworkers. People have a right to be unvaccinated, and the rest o…

That isn't true. There are a lot of unvaccinated people - notably any that have recovered from COVID - who pose less danger to their coworkers than someone who has only been vaccinated. This isn't based on risk assessment, this is based on ideology. There are situations developing where someone who is less likely to transmit COVID is being fired while someone more likely to transmit the disease is kept on - and every…

So would you be happy if in addition to vaccination and regular testing, regular antibody tests were also an alternative? And do you agree that this would also increase complexity (in my mind to questionable benefit)?

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

#369

Post by yonaguska »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #312
baumy wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the choice is between 3.5 million dead, and the rise of authoritarianism and censorship, then yes the former is much less tragic than the latter and therefore the more acceptable option. And that's before taking into account that the survival rate is quite a bit higher than 99%, so it won't be 3.5 million dead. And also before taking into account that the vast majority of the dead will be the very old, and people…

You're willing to sacrifice people that you consider "expendable", because you think vaccination and masks are more dangerous than a highly infectious disease with long-lasting detrimental health consequences even for survivors. Such a severe lack of empathy is disturbing. > the vast majority of the dead will be the very old, and people who took extraordinarily poor care of their health. This is incorrect, the Delta…

The CDC is misrepresenting both the covid risk for children as well as the vaccine risk for children in an effort to justify vaccinating children.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-cdc-owes-parents-better-mess...

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

#370

Post by maxerickson »

WalterBright wrote: post #356
hef19898 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single AC fleets mean an airline has somewhat of a single point of failure. If the issue at hand is caused by that point of failure, sure recovery will be harder. In most other cases it makes it actually easier, at least on paper. No need to get crews to certain planes, just a crew to a plane, as every crew is certified on any plane.

And people wonder why Boeing made such an effort to not need different pilot training for the MAX.

People don't really wonder that though. The potential for it to be beneficial to their customers is obvious.
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