<story><title>Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2022/12/26/1145536902/southwest-flight-cancellations-winter-storm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>As I understand it, Southwest is particularly badly affected by such issues because they run a lot of flights that are not in a hub-spoke model, but rather serial flights one non-hub city to the next and next (like eventually coming back in a loop).  You can see this by going to Flightaware.com for example, and following back a flight&amp;#x27;s previous destinations.  See for example &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;flightaware.com&amp;#x2F;live&amp;#x2F;flight&amp;#x2F;SWA1092&amp;#x2F;history&amp;#x2F;20221223&amp;#x2F;2210Z&amp;#x2F;KSJC&amp;#x2F;KSAN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;flightaware.com&amp;#x2F;live&amp;#x2F;flight&amp;#x2F;SWA1092&amp;#x2F;history&amp;#x2F;20221223...&lt;/a&gt; and &amp;quot;track inbound plane&amp;quot; a couple times.&lt;p&gt;They jump around the country, much less frequently going back to a hub as other airlines do. That means that the planes and crews have a relatively harder time recovering from system-wide disasters because they don&amp;#x27;t have as part of normal operations as much ability to centralize or pool resources  and get people&amp;#x2F;planes reorganized.  (everyone go back to base, consolidate passengers, crew, planes and redeploy them and sort things out in one place)&lt;p&gt;Unfortunate, but that&amp;#x27;s their model. Good for some purposes, not so good for others.  Maybe it&amp;#x27;s them being quirky and an active choice.  I mean, up until a few years ago they did not fly to Hawaii because their scheduling system &amp;#x2F; people &amp;#x2F; processes did not want to have redeye flights.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pookha</author><text>They&amp;#x27;ve operated without the hub-and-spoke model years but they haven&amp;#x27;t had to operate with over 8% of their staff leaving. They&amp;#x27;re understaffed. It was a major issue with Southwest all throughout 2022 and it got brought up on their earnings call with investors. They&amp;#x27;re a budget airline and they can&amp;#x27;t afford to take that kind of staffing hit.</text></comment>
<story><title>Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2022/12/26/1145536902/southwest-flight-cancellations-winter-storm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>As I understand it, Southwest is particularly badly affected by such issues because they run a lot of flights that are not in a hub-spoke model, but rather serial flights one non-hub city to the next and next (like eventually coming back in a loop).  You can see this by going to Flightaware.com for example, and following back a flight&amp;#x27;s previous destinations.  See for example &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;flightaware.com&amp;#x2F;live&amp;#x2F;flight&amp;#x2F;SWA1092&amp;#x2F;history&amp;#x2F;20221223&amp;#x2F;2210Z&amp;#x2F;KSJC&amp;#x2F;KSAN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;flightaware.com&amp;#x2F;live&amp;#x2F;flight&amp;#x2F;SWA1092&amp;#x2F;history&amp;#x2F;20221223...&lt;/a&gt; and &amp;quot;track inbound plane&amp;quot; a couple times.&lt;p&gt;They jump around the country, much less frequently going back to a hub as other airlines do. That means that the planes and crews have a relatively harder time recovering from system-wide disasters because they don&amp;#x27;t have as part of normal operations as much ability to centralize or pool resources  and get people&amp;#x2F;planes reorganized.  (everyone go back to base, consolidate passengers, crew, planes and redeploy them and sort things out in one place)&lt;p&gt;Unfortunate, but that&amp;#x27;s their model. Good for some purposes, not so good for others.  Maybe it&amp;#x27;s them being quirky and an active choice.  I mean, up until a few years ago they did not fly to Hawaii because their scheduling system &amp;#x2F; people &amp;#x2F; processes did not want to have redeye flights.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Waterluvian</author><text>I don’t fly much but I noticed things like “the same flight number takes off at the same time each day and is always the same plane as a different flight number coming the other direction.”&lt;p&gt;It must really help all the employees with routine and consistency even if it’s not optimal.</text></comment>