Southwest Airlines recovers from latest schedule disruption

Southwest Airlines attributed its latest disruption to flight activity this morning to data connection “problems” resulting from what it called a firewall failure. In a statement to AIN, the airline said a vendor-provided firewall failed, resulting in the unexpected loss of some “operational data”. Southwest crews worked quickly to minimize flight disruptions, but not soon enough to ease the frustrations of inconvenienced customers.

A tweet posted by the FAA said Southwest had asked the agency to suspend all departures until it resolves the computer issue. About an hour later, the FAA lifted the break at Southwest’s request.

The latest hiatus follows more serious meltdowns last October and over the Christmas holidays, drawing criticism from its pilots’ union over what it said were antiquated and inefficient planning processes. However, it is still unclear if this latest disruption has any connection to earlier cases.

In an interview late last year with AINSouthwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) President Casey Murray blamed previous disruptions on management’s failure to adequately address its schedule shortcomings.

“Here’s really the easiest way I’ve tried to explain it: Southwest can’t connect pilots to planes. It’s their failure,” Murray said. “At the start of any given day, whether it’s two years ago, five years ago, yesterday, we’re staffed and have the pilots…it’s the fragility of the network that’s the problem. It’s when something happens and their outdated programs start trying to find solutions that the failures begin.

Murray noted that flight attendants have encountered the same problem because they work under the same outdated schedule system. Members of both groups found themselves piloting what he called “circular dead spots” created by an automated scheduling system called SkySolver, a proprietary program whose genesis dates back to the 1990s.

He explained that the union had been suggesting solutions to the problem for five years and that the subject was a central point of contention in ongoing contract negotiations. Although Murray admitted that the airline’s point-to-point network model challenged dispatchers in the Southwest more than those in airlines using a hub-and-spoke system, he insisted that they could manage the situation with the “right tools”.