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Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

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Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#71

Post by lycopodiopsida »

Semaphor wrote: post #62
akiselev wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after the VP of operations out of Dallas sent a demanding (and possibly unreasonable) memo to the Denver staff banning sick time without a doctors note and requiring mandatory overtime IANAL but that’s not just unreasonable, it’s downright illegal according to Colorado labor laws. Southwest can only ask their employees for a doctor’s note after four consecutive days of absence and that’s according to a post-COVID l…

> it’s downright illegal according to Colorado labor laws. Interesting, that's the first time I hear of a US law being better for employee protection than here in Germany. Do they have limited sick days? That could explain it, as they are obviously unlimited here, but doctor's notes are commonly required after 0-1 days.

We have 3 days without notice, it is a very big company, however, so maybe an outliner.

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#72

Post by deaddodo »

Semaphor wrote: post #66
deaddodo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a US law, it's a state law. And there are plenty of laws throughout the union that are "better" (more favorable to the employee) than in various places in the EU. California, for instance, has pretty strict employee/tenant protections; along with Oregon, New York, etc. There are also others that are substantially worse (Mississippi, Alabama, etc). You can't compare US Federal law to German Federal law (in th…

I meant "the first time I hear" quite literally, I know there are state laws and those can be quite different, I just had never heard of a specific law regarding employee protection that actually was better for employees

There was no doubt to the literality of your statement. I was simply highlighting your misplaced assumptions and how they can be addressed/corrected in the future.

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#73

Post by moeffju »

gernb wrote: post #67
Semaphor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s downright illegal according to Colorado labor laws. Interesting, that's the first time I hear of a US law being better for employee protection than here in Germany. Do they have limited sick days? That could explain it, as they are obviously unlimited here, but doctor's notes are commonly required after 0-1 days.

I know I'm a spoiled engineer but if a company ever required a doctor's note I'd just come to work sick, walk into my boss's office and cough as hard as I could directly in their face. Actually, I'd just not take that job.

Trust is great, but society consists of many complex interlocking systems, so at least some level of verification and attestation is needed.

Besides: Doing that knowingly and intentionally would likely qualify as assault (besides being a morally shitty thing to do).

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#74

Post by ars »

tareqak wrote: post #49
ars wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have cause and effect backwards. That memo appears to be issued as a result of all the flight problems. And it says it's a temporary emergency policy due to the current trouble they are having.

The memo is dated December 21, 2022 and today is December 27, 2022. I don’t remember if the North American winter storms started before December 21, on that day, or after.

It started on the day the memo was written: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_December_2022_North_Ame...

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#75

Post by yellow_lead »

mathattack wrote: post #33
yellow_lead wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy that airlines can't keep their internal tools working.

Underinvestment. Part due to a lack of demand the past 3 years, part due to a race to the bottom on pricing and quality that predates the pandemic.

We've heard a lot of stories about scheduling systems getting overwhelmed at airlines in the past few years. I wonder if any airlines are making a push to modernize them. Or is the business so low margin that they can't afford it?

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#76

Post by markus92 »

ipython wrote: post #14

Found this interesting reading as to a possible reason why their flight system seems so much more fragile than the legacy carriers: https://www.inc.com/kelly-main/southwest-becomes-one-of-amer...

Ryanair in Europe pretty much operates the same with many small hubs and point-to-point flights, but for some reason they are also run objectively a very reliable operation. Wonder why that is.

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#77

Post by Semaphor »

deaddodo wrote: post #72
Semaphor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant "the first time I hear" quite literally, I know there are state laws and those can be quite different, I just had never heard of a specific law regarding employee protection that actually was better for employees

There was no doubt to the literality of your statement. I was simply highlighting your misplaced assumptions and how they can be addressed/corrected in the future.

There was no misplaced assumption.

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#78

Post by ivraatiems »

cjekel wrote: post #54
ivraatiems wrote: post #51

I was impacted by this. I had three flights canceled in four days. My bags are still somewhere in Denver. I ended up rebooking on American. I'm certainly going to try to make Southwest pay for it, once their phone lines clear up. Southwest is going to need to go above and beyond to fix this or they're done in my book. I will choose a more expensive option over them. I'll choose a less direct route. This Russian Roule…

I hope your damages are minimal. What would it take for southwest to remedy the station for you? I know it's hard to say. You may never get your bags. I'm basically valuing any future southwest credit as $0. All of my air miles at $0 too :(

It's a fair question.

I think I'd want the following:

All my property restored as it was (whether physically or through paying for replacement costs). Full reimbursement for replacement flights, clothes, rental cars, gas, food, and other expenses incurred due to their negligence. Some kind of additional multiplier on top of that as an apology for the stress inflicted.

On my American flight tonight I added up just the total I've paid to fix Southwest's screwup, and it's already almost $1k before my luggage and not counting the refunded cost of my trip. My baggage foolishly contained at least one article of clothing which is genuinely irreplaceable. I don't know how I'd calculate the cost of that.

So we're looking at two or three grand of compensation before I ever even consider being a customer again.

I'm probably not worth it.

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#79

Post by rapjr9 »

imroot wrote: post #61

I don't work for Southwest, but, I have friends that do. The situation is kind of amplified by the fact that they are now doing crew scheduling by hand -- their crew scheduling system went offline at some point during this fiasco -- and because they aren't a hub and spoke style of airline, they don't have flight attendants at their hubs...so, what's happening is that flight attendants are scheduled for a "leg" of a t…

This does not sound unique to Southwest, I imagine all airlines have to do this to get people staged in the right places. Which means our air travel system is basically a just-in-time system and as we've learned JIT systems break quickly when there are shortages. Software problems and a lack of schedulers may be contributing to this event, but it seems like it could happen to any airline and is something of an infrastructure weakness in global transport. In fact, airlines might sometimes book flights for pilots and attendents on competitors planes, which may mean the lack of flights by Southwest could affect other airlines placement of personnel, so there may be some contagion risk.

Re: Massive Southwest Airlines disruption leaves customers stranded

#80

Post by rasz »

yellow_lead wrote: post #27
miguelazo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t doubt this, although a friend stuck at Denver yesterday told me he ran into a Southwest employee who couldn’t figure out where he was supposed to be for hours. WSJ mentioned it could be due to their call-in scheduling system being totally overwhelmed.

It's crazy that airlines can't keep their internal tools working.

IT as a cost center
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