Looking at flights stats over the last few days and we see that US carriers have largely been operationally resilient this year, even with bad weather sweeping through parts of the nation. The lone exception is Southwest Airlines, though even with over 1,000 flight delays Southwest is running a remarkably better Christmas travel operation than last year.
Southwest Airlines Flight Delays Persist
Many of you will recall the Southwest Airlines meltdown last year around this time that confounded the holiday plans of hundreds of thousands of travelers (over 10,000 flights were cancelled). It began in Denver, but spread across the nation, costing Southwest $800 million. Southwest promised to heavily invest in its technology and infrastructure to avoid repeat occurrences and to this point has avoided a meltdown in 2023.
But Southwest has posted some alarming delays over the last few days which suggest it still has a long ways to go in terms of fully correcting the core issues in which delays snowball into more delays. This was not a systemwide issue because competitors like American, Delta, and United posted much better numbers during the same period despite facing the same weather patterns (even in some of the same hub cities). Per Flight Aware:
- On Saturday, Southwest Airlines delayed 31% of its flights (only 2% were cancelled).
- On Sunday, Southwest Airlines delayed 29% of its flights (cancelling 6%).
- Today, Southwest Airlines has relayed delayed 11% of its flights and cancelled 5%.
Granted, these numbers are far better than a year ago, but still represent a lot of interrupted holiday plans.
So what does Southwest blame the delays on? Fog in Chicago.
“With visibility remaining below required operational minimums throughout the night and continuing this morning, we’ve modified our planned start for today (Sunday) at Chicago Midway. We have all-hands on deck as our employees are working quickly to take care of our customers and accommodate them on alternative flights.
“We continue to experience some delays and diversions as fog remains a factor. We apologize for the inconvenience to our customers as we work to get them to their destination safely.”
The weather has been bad in Chicago, but United and American have managed to keep operations flowing across town at Chicago O’Hare better than Southwest has Midway (United has delayed more flights than American).
Some travelers apparently did not learn their lesson from last year:
@SouthwestAir you guys ruined my Christmas two years in a row. Utter incompetence in Omaha. Just can’t trust you guys ever again.
— matt (@Amer1canus) December 25, 2023
CONCLUSION
Southwest has had a rough few days, even as the issues are nowhere close to the four-day meltdown a year ago that led to over 10,000 flight cancellations. Even with minimal cancellations, thousands of flight have been delayed over the last few days, again interrupting the plans of travelers across the country.
image: Southwest Airlines
So it’s WN’s fault that MDW can’t be bothered to improve their runways to allow for CAT I-III landings?
Uh, yeah. MDW is almost exclusively a Southwest airport, and WN should work with the airport to ensure the necessary infrastructure improvements.
Airlines work with airports on infrastructure all the time.
Valid points…until you realize it’s Chicago…
Why is there always an excuse? At what point are you going to actually state the WN has a problem. Last year WN blamed everything on the weather even though the other airlines at the same airports didn’t have a complete meltdown.
Fools didn’t learn their lesson last year when Southwest ruined their Christmas
Fool me once shame you, fool me twice I’m a southwest customer.
Fool? We can’t get fooled again!
Some more context on MDW vs ORD from WN:
While MDW has experienced challenging conditions, ORD has different approach capabilities, allowing Category II and III operations as conditions warrant. The lowest approach capability for ORD is 600 feet RVR (Runway Visual Range), which means aircraft are still able to arrive there. At MDW, however, the RVR is 3000 feet, or ½ mile visibility.
We got it Steve. You work in the White House (wn headquarters ) in the PR department and trying to let everybody know that Southwest is great. But your stats say something completely different and if WN cannot operate out of MDW, then they should pull out.
Looks like a FREEZE, not a melt!
How much of this was due to staffing shortage? They claim all hands on deck, but if everyone scheduled to work don’t show it’s a big problem.
Fool me twice…..
Yes Matthew, maybe ops at ORD were running better than at MDW. But then again, MDW had a ground stop issued by the FAA on Sunday morning for several hours due to the fog. So what should Southwest have done differently? Most flights eventually made it to MDW albeit late – my daughter’s flight was one of those. Weather-related delays/cancellations happen, you of all people should know that. However, explaining such to the armchair pilot commenters who know this was all Southwest’s fault – there is just not enough time left in the year.
Pilot here. It’s clear the author-and most commenters here-have no idea how airports are funded and actually work. MDW has VERY short runways, with INCOMPARABLY fewer landing instrument electronics than ORD. They’re really not even comparable.
There will never be an expansion of MDW’s runways, as the airport property is bounded on all sides by city. And SWA has no control over the FAA and their responsibility for installing and maintaining landing systems. The arrivals rate at MDW will always be drastically more constrained than ORD with exactly the same weather.
It was no better for Tuesday (Dec 27).
As per flight aware, 4 cancelled flights (0%) and 1610 (35%) delayed flights.
The real question is how long a delay (1 hour, 2 hours, 3+ hours) did PAX experience?
Southwest management is running scared.