Southwest Airlines played Scrooge over the holidays, inconveniencing or outright stranding almost a million customers, many of whom spent Christmas in airport terminals where the occasional racist cop threatened to charge them with “trespassing.” (Yes, that happened in Nashville.)
Certain people across the political spectrum have chosen to blame this disaster on Pete Buttigieg, who is not the Southwest Airlines CEO but he is President Joe Biden’s secretary of Transportation. We guess that means he should make the planes run on time. Fox News gleefully ran a clip of Buttigieg telling talk show host James Corden, during last summer’s airline travel debacle, that the situation should improve by the holidays and that “we’re really pressing the airlines to deliver better service.”
Fox News opinion columnist Colin Reed wondered, “Is Pete Buttigieg’s political future grounded forever after Southwest holiday travel disaster?” Failed congressional candidate Nina Turner tweeted, “Maybe if @PeteButtigieg had been more aggressive this past year with airlines for canceling service, Southwest Airlines would’ve been more cautious with their systems. Instead, Secretary Buttigieg decided to go easy on airlines because he wanted to keep corporate donors happy.” This is both unfair and inaccurate.
The Department of Transportation is empowered to get tough with airlines who offer shoddy service, but Turner doesn’t seem to realize that Southwest being “more cautious” with its systems would potentially mean scheduling fewer flights, which would most likely not meet rising demand and thus result in higher fares. The free market is an mfer. The sheer volume of people willing to travel right now is perhaps the most compelling evidence that despite inflation, we’re not entering a recession.
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Southwest Airlines has a host of issues, most of which are self-inflicted, like its absurd lack of assigned seating. As Kathleen Bangs, former commercial airline pilot and spokesperson for Flight Aware, explained, Southwest relies heavily on “shorter, point-to-point flights, rather than [the] ‘hub and spoke’ model of many of its largest competitors.” That works out well enough when the weather’s okay, but during a major storm like last month, the whole system falls apart. Also, Southwest’s actual computer system is an outdated disaster. The Commodore 64s or whatever it is their people use were inadequate to assign available crew to planes that were just waiting around or even transfer passengers to available flights.
The airline’s pilot and flight attendant unions had long warned about the “rickety” computer systems, and we can assume that meteorologists might’ve warned Southwest about the possibility of winter storms during December. However, Southwest has “never viewed technology as a strategic priority,” according to Henry Harteveldt, who covers airlines for Atmosphere Research Group.
Southwest probably should’ve updated its systems during the pandemic lull but apparently it spent all that COVID bailout money on CEO bonuses and magic beans. Buttigieg wasn’t Transportation secretary when the federal government rained money on the airlines with (mostly) no strings attached. Southwest’s operations eroded under the watch of several of his predecessors.
Last summer, New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter to Buttigieg about “the deeply troubling and escalating pattern of airlines delaying and canceling flights.” Other attorneys general from a total of 38 states, territories, and the District of Columbia said the Department of Transportation was leaving a “vacuum of oversight” that “allows airlines to mistreat consumers and leaves consumers without effective redress.”
A department spokesperson told the New York Post last week, “DOT has issued the largest fines in the history of the consumer protection office this year – helping to get hundreds of thousands of people hundreds of millions of dollars back … Further, in August Secretary Buttigieg pressed airlines to do more for passengers who had a flight canceled or delayed when it was under the airline’s control, such as covering the costs of rebooking, guaranteeing meals or hotels. Prior to his urging, none of the 10 largest US airlines guaranteed meals or hotels when a delay or cancellation was within the airlines’ control, and only one offered free rebooking.”
Buttigieg himself slammed Southwest last week, tweeting, “Southwest passengers have experienced unacceptable disruptions and customer service conditions … I have made clear to their executives that our department will hold Southwest accountable for making things right with their customers and employees.” Tweets aren’t actions, though, and this week, he said the Department of Transportation is putting Southwest under a microscope in “terms of their delivering these kinds of reimbursements and refunds to passengers.”
Airlines should cover their customers’ expenses when they cancel flights not because of unforeseen weather conditions but their own operational incompetence. However, that would only slightly take the sting out of missing the holidays with family. Ideally, the Department of Transportation would issue harsh fines if airlines don’t meet their commitments to customers. This isn’t just a Southwest issue. Last summer, The Prospect reported that airlines “are knowingly scheduling flights, when there is high probability that the flight will have to be canceled.” It’s all a predictable result of short-staffing, which makes airline shareholders happy but airline passengers miserable.
Buttigieg couldn’t have fixed this rotten system in just two years, but for the rest of his tenure, he should pursue solutions that aren’t simply applying Band-Aids after the fact.
[New York Post / The Prospect]
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