Southwest Airways vows to extend winter staffing and enhance tech after vacation mess

Southwest Airways‘ CEO stated the corporate will improve winter staffing and tools to assist keep away from a repeat of mass cancelations over the year-end holidays that price the corporate hundreds of thousands of {dollars} and stranded tens of hundreds of vacationers.

In a submitting forward of an investor convention, Southwest stated it continues to count on a loss within the first quarter after a income hit of as a lot as $350 million ensuing from the fallout of the vacation mess final 12 months, when it canceled greater than 16,000 flights over the last 10 days of 2022, drawing criticism from Washington.

Southwest stated it expects unit prices, excluding gas, to be up as a lot as 6.5% 12 months over 12 months this quarter, larger than a January forecast of a rise of not more than 4%.

The corporate will buy extra tools to deice planes and bolster staffing ranges. Bitter temperatures throughout a sequence of storms earlier than Christmas final 12 months restricted how a lot time crews have been in a position to spend exterior, Southwest stated.

The airline can even enhance expertise to raised predict how lengthy deicing might take and has improved one in every of its scheduling platforms to guarantee sufficient staffing for flights when issues go mistaken.

“We perceive the foundation causes that led to the vacation disruption, and we’re validating our inside evaluate with the third-party evaluation. Now, we count on to mitigate the danger of an occasion of this magnitude ever taking place once more,” CEO Bob Jordan stated in a information launch. “Work is properly underway implementing motion objects to organize for subsequent winter—with some objects already accomplished.”