Southwest Airlines Meltdown

In the 1990s, I did a lot of work-related flying, much of it on Southwest. This wasn't because I preferred it, but because the corporate travel departments put me on discount carriers. At the time, though, its corporate attitude was fun, a lot like the famous Volkswagen ad campaigns of the 1960s. For instance,

While peanuts are now a snack, they once stood for how frugal the airline was: other airlines served meals while Southwest served just peanuts. Some Southwest executives felt they would need to increase their investment in inflight food. Then-CEO Herb Kelleher shot that down, “Do you know what the difference in cost is between peanuts and Snickers?”

For several years, I commuted to various job assignments in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Sacramento via Southwest and even became familiar with a few of the crews. One flight attendant, who simply followed then-corporate policy of encouraging individual expression, would sing on the PA a ditty whose first line was, "I wish I was a Southwest Airlines Peanut". Those days are gone. As of 2018, even the peanuts were gone. According to the link,

Southwest Airlines will stop serving peanuts August 1 citing passenger allergies. That’s really notable because of the history of ‘peanuts’ intertwined with the airline since its founding.

By then, any policies encouraging freelance expression by flight attendants were also long gone:

In March 2017, Charlene Carter was fired by all Boeing 737 carrier Southwest Airlines. Carter claims that the airline and Transport Workers Union Local 556 violated her rights by firing her. Carter was fired for sending confrontational anti-abortion messages to the former president of the union, Audrey Stone. According to documents from the lawsuit, Carter called Stone “despicable” for attending a march in Washington DC earlier that year.

. . . Carter added that the union should not support events that included groups like Planned Parenthood. Stone never replied to Carter’s messages, but Carter was summoned by Southwest management for a mandatory meeting about her messages. Eventually, the issue led to a lawsuit, and a judge has just ruled that Carter should be reinstated by the airline.

I liked Southwest so much in the 1990s that I bought shares, but they never did as well as I expected, and the airline gradually became corporate-conventional and boring. By now, it seems to have lost control over both its operations and its once-;refreshing public image:

The U.S. Transportation Department slammed Southwest and pledged to review the airline after thousands of flights were canceled due following days of severe winter weather.

"USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service. The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan," the Transportation Department tweeted late Monday evening.

Southwest canceled 71% of its flights on Monday and at least 62% of its flights so far on Tuesday, equaling more than 5,400 flights over the past two days, according to FlightAware.

The problem is especially bad in Southern California, one of its major markets:

What began as a crisis for Southwest Airlines amid a crippling winter storm turned to paralysis Monday evening when the budget carrier apparently canceled all departing flights from Los Angeles area airports until Dec. 31.

Thousands of flights have been canceled nationwide.

The airline’s website lists all departures out of LAX, Hollywood Burbank Airport, Ontario International Airport and the John Wayne Airport as “unavailable” until New Year’s Eve.

A few posters on Reddit and elsewhere tried to clarify that the flights were "unavailable" on the reservation system, not "canceled", and that probably reflected people who'd already rescheduled from canceled flights, but even if that's the case, the distinction is entirely academic for people who still can't fly out, and worse, it reflects that the public relations problem is entirely out of control, since Southwest has clearly been unable even to get Los Angeles media to clarify the situation, for whatever slight advantage that might give them.

It's sad to see them playing corporate catch-up:

Southwest admitted anticipating "additional challenges with an already reduced level of flights as we approach the coming New Year's holiday travel period, and we are working to reach out to customers whose travel plans will change with specific information and their available options."

Southwest added its employees and crews "are showing up in every single way. We are beyond grateful for that. Our shared goal is to take care of every single customer with the hospitality and heart for which we are known. On the other side of this, we will work to make things right for those we have let down, including our employees."

So they've suddently decided to rely on " the hospitality and heart for which we are known". Those days are 30 years in the past, and Southwest has been squandering passenger good will ever since. I hate to say I'm looking forward to a certain amount of Schadenfreude.