First, search for existing software from third parties or other airlines to drastically improve the process for crew members to notify the airline of their location and arrange lodging. Without the opportunity to review Southwest’s systems, it is difficult to make recommendations to the airline, but I do have two suggestions for getting started. It is amazing that it only took about a week to restore operations to normal. So imagine human schedulers trying to restore a network covering 121 destinations served by over 700 aircraft flown by almost 10,000 pilots with over 60,000 flight attendants. The Southwest flight and crew scheduling app was overwhelmed by the holiday storm. These flight crews fly to around 121 destinations. The Southwest Pilots association claims a membership of almost 10,000 pilots. To staff the cabins, Southwest has over 60,000 flight attendants. And according to, Southwest has 745 planes in service, though I would guess they get a quantity discount ordering multiple planes at once and probably lease a good number of their aircraft. For many industries the cost of computer hardware and software can seem daunting in comparison with other investment costs, but that 737 has a list price of over $100 million. And a jet airplane is one of the most complex machines built today: A 737 has over 367,000 parts from hundreds of vendors. Underinvestment in IT by an airline is surprising because American Airlines and IBM developed the first online reservations system over 50 years ago. The scheduling system is either old and has not kept up with the growth of the airline or it has not been stress tested or both. It appears from a Southwest spokesperson in the essay that the company does have technology for scheduling crews and aircraft, but it was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster and the airline had to revert to manual scheduling. Tufekci asks why there is no smartphone app or website for the attendants. ![]() Attendants report being on hold for three to 17 hours making these calls. If a flight is canceled, evidently flight attendants must phone Southwest to let the company know where they are and arrange for hotel rooms. ![]() For example, the flight attendants’ union placed updating scheduling technology above its demand for increased pay. In a recent essay in the New York Times, Columbia University Professor Zeynep Tufekci describes some of the antiquated technology at Southwest. The CEO and other executives at Southwest failed in these areas.
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