The Southwest Airlines meltdown that¡¯s stranded thousands of passengers across the U.S. has its root in outdated technology that analysts and its unions have warned about for years.
Southwest¡¯s system ¡ª flying point to point instead of the hub-and-spoke model used by rivals ¡ª is a point of pride, deeply embedded in its five-decade history and helps it reach many medium-size markets. But the behind-the-scenes technology that makes it possible to schedule crews and aircraft all proved brittle this week after a severe blizzard halted thousands of flights, just as it did in a similar systemic collapse in October 2021. When the computers weren¡¯t up to the task, humans had to step in to hunt down pilots and flight crews by telephone in order to manage passenger backlogs.
¡°People have a right to be really angry and annoyed,¡± Cowen analyst Helane Becker said Wednesday in a Bloomberg Television interview. ¡°They should have invested years ago in these systems and they just didn¡¯t.¡±
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