Senators grill Southwest about Christmas meltdown

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on Thursday to examine the operations of Southwest Airlines after its massive service failure during the Christmas and New Year's holiday left thousands of passengers stranded and frustrated.

Senators grilled Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson and relayed the frustrations of numerous constituents.

Here are the highlights from the hearing:

Southwest apologized again: "I want to sincerely and humbly apologize to those impacted by the disruption," Watterson said. "It caused a tremendous amount of anguish, inconvenience, and missed opportunities for our customers and employees during a time of year when people want to gather with their families and avoid stressful situations."

A key system may be fixed tomorrow: Fixes to the airline's crew scheduling system that failed spectacularly during the service meltdown in December will be live "tomorrow," Watterson said. "Tomorrow, the fix will go in, it will be live on our production system. It has already had two rounds in our test system."

Pilots have been sounding the alarm on shortcomings for years: Casey A. Murray, president of Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said the employees at Southwest Airlines love the company, but they have also been sounding the alarm on its shortcomings and want the company to do better. "We've seen these meltdowns occur with more frequency and more severity," he said. “This isn’t an IT fix. This isn’t a plug-and-play. It’s got to be holistic."

Southwest still has 200 bags to return: The bags that remain unreturned by Southwest "have no markings or identifying information," Watterson said. "We will continue to hold those until we can find someone who owns it."

Nearly 11,000 recently filed claims are yet to be reimbursed: Southwest received 284,188 eligible cases for reimbursements. Of those claims, 273,406 have been reimbursed, leaving 10,782, Watterson said. "Those have been the ones submitted most recently and we were within the DOT (Department of Transportation) timeline of 30 days for processing all those."

Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told the Senate Commerce Committee that the company received 284,188 eligible cases for reimbursements after its service failure led to more than 16,000 flight cancellations between Dec. 20 and Dec. 29.

Nearly 11,000 of those cases — the ones that were most recently filed — have not yet been reimbursed, Watterson said.

"We have reimbursed 273,406. That leaves 10,782 that have not been reimbursed. But those have been the ones submitted most recently and we were within the DOT (Department of Transportation) timeline of 30 days for processing all those," he told the committee.

Watterson said that the company emailed every customer affected with an apology, flyer points and resources to contact Southwest.

Southwest Airlines' service meltdown left millions of passengers without their bags, at least temporarily. And in many cases it took days or weeks to return bags to customers.

But at least some of the bags have yet to find a home.

"We’ve returned every single bag, except there are 200 we still have that have no markings or identifying information," said Andrew Watterson, Southwest's chief operating officer, in testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee. "We will continue to hold those until we can find someone who owns it."

In addition, there are more than 10,000 passengers who have not been reimbursed for the expenses they incurred due to the disruption, such as travel on other airlines, hotels, car rentals and meals. Watterson said 273,000 customers have received compensation, and that most of those who have not yet been compensated submitted their claims within the last 30 days, and that they will receive their payments within a 30-day window.

Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson lauded the employees who worked throughout the service meltdown in December.

"Our people were the hero of the event. They showed up. We had absolutely no problem with attendance nor service," he told Sen. Jacky Rosen. "We're very grateful that our people showed up."

The company has taken steps to applaud the performances of these employees.

"There's no way we can give back the time that was taken from them, but we were able to show them some gratitude with incremental pay. And we would be involving them in our efforts to make sure this doesn't happen again," Watterson added.

Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson acknowledged that if another service meltdown was to occur, the airlines would not be able to staff for the call demands coming out of that.

"In an exact repeat of that situation, I apologize, there is no way we could staff that high," he said. "There's no amount of people we could have put in place to handle all the calls at that time because of the scale of the disruption."

When Sen. Tammy Duckworth asked if he could assure that passengers of a canceled flight would be able to reach an airline staff member within a reasonable amount of time during a disruption, Watterson said: "In a normal disruption, we aim for a three to nine minute average speed of answer. That's how we fund our union-represented call centers."

Pointing to the great distress caused to American consumers due to the Southwest Airlines' service meltdown, Sen. Ed Markey called on the company to provide affected customers a "cash hardship payment" to affected customers.

Many stranded travelers were forced to stay extra days in hotels or book alternate mode of transportation to get to their destinations as Southwest canceled more than 16,000. flights between Dec. 20 and Dec. 29 in 2022.

The Democrat from Massachusetts said "cash hardship payments" would go "beyond refunds and repayments to help passengers who suffered due to these cancellations."

But Southwest COO Andrew Watterson said that the company believes being generous with "frequent flyer points" was the right approach for the company.

Unfortunately, "those points are little consolation" to the customers, Markey responded.

Watterson also said that Southwest would not pay money to affected customers for their inconvenience during the service meltdown, "unless it's reimbursement of a flight they took in the disruption."

Casey A. Murray, president of Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said the employees at Southwest Airlines love the company, but they have also been sounding the alarm on its shortcomings and want the company to do better.

The service meltdown over Christmas holidays was a "failure epically from top to bottom," he told the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday, detailing that the whole operational infrastructure of the airlines failed, where operations agents didn't know what was going on.

"The pilots have been sounding the alarm for over a decade," he told Sen. Ted Cruz. "We've seen these meltdowns occur with more frequency and more severity."

Murray added that Southwest is a data-driven organization, and in keeping with that culture, his association has provided the management with “point-to-point solutions for their point-to-point network.”

“This isn’t an IT fix. This isn’t a plug-and-play. It’s got to be holistic,” he emphasized.

However, he clarified that he is not against the point-to-point operation model of Southwest Airlines.

The consistent years of profits at Southwest Airlines, except in 2020, is due to “the magic of our point-to-point system,” he said.

“Our customers love it. It gives us competitive edge,” Murray added.

Fixes to the Southwest Airlines' crew scheduling system that failed spectacularly during the service meltdown in December will be live "tomorrow," said Andrew Watterson, Southwest's chief operating officer, during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday.

"With regard to this event, our crew scheduling system had a particular fault," Watterson said. "Tomorrow, the fix will go in, it will be live on our production system. It has already had two rounds in our test system."

"So the same event, if it happened in a week, we would have a different outcome?" asked Maria Cantwell, the Washington state Democrat who is the chair of the committee.

"The technology would not stop functioning," Watterson responded.

But Watterson cautioned the scheduling system was not the only thing that failed and caused the problems.

"We believe our winter operations resiliency was the root cause, and that will take longer to address," he said. "So we will focus on that for the bulk of our time." He said that includes upgrades of its deicing capabilities, particularly in Denver and at Chicago Midway airport.

Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson explained why the airline had a service meltdown during the Christmas holidays, leading to more than 16,000 canceled flights between Dec. 20 and Dec. 29.

"Let me be clear. We messed up," he stated. "In hindsight, we did not have enough winter operations resiliency."

He pointed to weather, the point-to-point operations model and other factors that led to this problem.

"Ultimately, none of this is an excuse. We need to make sure that our operational resiliency and technology are strengthened for future extreme weather events no matter how unprecedented. We owe that to our customers and our employees," he said.

Watterson laid out some steps he said Southwest is taking to improve its operations. They include:

• Prioritizing enhancement for crew scheduling software
• Strengthened early indicators dashboard to escalate operational issues earlier
• Establishing supplemental operational staffing that can quickly mobilize crew recovery efforts
• Improving coordination among key divisions