Southwest's aborted mission to be "the most loved airline"

It's now over a week since the Nightmare Before Christmas Eve travel meltdown, and for all I know, Southwest Airlines is still digging themselves out. The debacle definitely seems to be turning in to a pretty nasty version of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Sure, the horrendous nationwide weather situation - deep freezes, blizzards, flooding - impacted all airlines. When it's 8 below and there's four feet of snow on the ground, it's sort of hard to get airborne. But Southwest was responsible for an outsized proportion of cancellations. During those horrendous days just before Christmas, Southwest was responsible for the clear majority of cancellations. The number 70% sticks in my head, but I couldn't find the citation. Whatever the number was, it was well out of whack with Southwest's domestic market share, which is 17.4%.

And the festivities, or lack thereof, continued well into last week, when Southwest's proportion of cancelled flights got even worse.

Southwest accounted for about 90 percent of Wednesday’s flight cancellations by U.S. airlines and about 99 percent of Thursday’s grounded flights. Other carriers appear to have recovered from the storm, posting typical numbers of cancellations, according to data from the tracking service FlightAware. (Source: Washington Post)

Turns out, Southwest's troubles, and the troubles of the hundreds of thousands of travelers - lost luggage, extra expenses incurred, refunds in limbo - who were booked on Southwest, had less to do with the rotten weather conditions and more to do with Southwest's setup.

The issues partly stem from the carrier’s unique “point-to-point” model, in which planes tend to fly from destination to destination without returning to one or two main hubs. Most airlines follow a “hub-and-spoke” model, in which planes typically return to a hub airport after flying out to other cities.

When bad weather hits, hub-and-spoke airlines can shut down specific routes and have plans in place to restart operations when the skies clear. But bad weather can scramble multiple flights and routes in a point-to-point model, leaving Southwest staff out of position to resume normal operations.

The vast snowstorm last week exposed other vulnerabilities in Southwest’s network. Inadequate computer systems made it difficult to shift crews to where they were needed most. In addition, Southwest lacks agreements with other airlines and could not rebook passengers on competitors’ flights, forcing many people to wait days until Southwest clears its backlog. (Source: NY Times)

Pretty interesting, given that one of Southwest's differentiators has been its operational efficiency.

Another big differentiator: Southwest pride itself on being friendly. In your face friendly. As in sing-along whether you like it or not friendly. As in, jeepers, let's have some fun on this flight. As in ukulele lessons for everyone. 

After all, part of their mission is "to be the world's most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline."

Most loved? Give me the cattle car treatment we used to get on the old (long gone and occasionally lamented) Eastern Shuttle on its Boston-LaGuardia route any old day. Just get me there, and let me travel in peace.

Delayed and canceled flights are always stressful. I remember plenty of mad airport scrambles, in the pre-Internet, pre-smartphone world, to grab a new flight. I remember sitting in at the gate for interminable hours, waiting to get on a plane. Or sitting on a plane on the tarmac waiting to take off. Or get off.

The only good cancellation I remember was one to Frankenmuth, Michigan. 

Sure, I would probably have gotten a kick out of seeing a bit of a Bavarian-themed town, but if my flight is going to be canceled by a snowstorm, I'd rather have it be canceled while I'm still in Boston, than get stranded in Frankenmuth, Michigan. (Especially given that, as it turned out, we didn't get the business we were after.)

But getting delayed or stranded over Christmas, when all you want is to get home for the holidays, especially with kiddos in tow? How terrible!

The whole mess has gotten Southwest scrambling to try to live up to its love mission. With little luck so far. Customers are understandably and rightly pissed.

So Southwest is taking a big reputational hit and, of course, a hit to its bottom line. And it now has the Feds breathing down their neck, as Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has called for an investigation into why all this is happening at Southwest.

Meanwhile, competitor airlines, including United and Frontier, are looking like the good guys by capping fares on routes that both they and Southwest serve. If there's any love left in the wonderful world of holiday travel, it'll flee Southwest for United and Frontier, which will attempt to accommodate the Southwest refugees without gouging them. 

One big Bah Humbug of a holiday for Southwest Airlines, I'm afraid.

Hope that, now that we're into the new year, all the tuckered out, beleaguered Southwest travelers have gotten sorted out and are back where they belong.