Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

Post by maxerickson » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 11:22 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #316

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.

Operating a business is a lot like flying an airline in one respect: It's not your average hight above the zero point that matters so much as never, ever going below it. Failure to maintain altitude above ground level and failure to maintain solvency are in many ways equivalent. Both domains involve taking risks, but with severe consequences when either risks are miscalculated or ground truths change. Financial bets…

Post by kuschku » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 11:33 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #253

michaelmrose wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rapid test isn't very accurate especially in the absence of a full blown infection. The annual cost of doing a PCR test twice a week to ensure you always have an actually accurate test within 72 hours of working would be around $15,600. This is about 43% of the gross individual median income. For practical purposes employers can't afford to pay near 50% more for the least reasonable employees, the government isn'…

The rapid antigen test is considerably less accurate than a PCR test if the goal is individual medical treatment, but if the goal is public health, it's potentially more effective. Michael Mina makes the case for this persuasively in a recent UCSF Grand Rounds[1]. These tests could be made available at scale and cheaply, as is the case in many European countries, but we have chosen not to do that. This is a mistake w…

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 11:39 AM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #13

malwarebytess wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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Post by new_guy » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 11:50 AM UTC

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?

Post by syshum » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 11:56 AM UTC

native_samples wrote: post #345

cronix wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this substack[1], it was a pilot walkout/"sickout" due to vaccine mandates. It's actually happening in more companies/industries than widely reported. I imagine it's also picked up steam since last weeks revelation from leaked internal Pfizer emails[2] that they used cells from aborted fetuses while testing the RDNA vaccine (testing - it's not in the vaccine), but have publicly stated otherwise. It was a…

It's telling that this is downvoted, even though it presents actual evidence from an actual SWA employee vs the random speculation found elsewhere in the thread. The cause isn't leanness or MBAs, its pilots protesting against vaccine mandates, by the testimony of an actual pilot who works there.