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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

The explanation of "weather and an FAA shutdown" doesn't make sense given that, according to the article, other airlines aren't experiencing this at all.

Oh, and for folks talking about a pilot protest against vaccine mandates, that theory is discussed at length toward the end of the article.

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I imagine this kind of thing cascades quite badly if it goes wrong, so it's not unimaginable that they just got unlucky regarding where machines are/where crews that are rested are and it collapsed from there, whereas other airlines got lucky/predicted the consequences better/had more resilient planning.

(EDIT: which would match the union statement /u/hnburnsy quotes: but what was a minor temporary event for other carriers devastated Southwest Airlines because our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure. Our operation and our frontline employees have endured continuous and unending disruptions since the first time our airline made headlines in early June due to widespread IT failures.)

Southwest also operates a flight network that relies on flights making multiple stops along the way, whereas many other airlines may have more direct flights that aren’t impacted as much by distant flights being delayed.

Here’s an article from the AP that mentions the “point-to-point route network” as a contributing factor in terms of a cascading failure: https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-business-travel-8abd4e0...

To counteract this Southwest does not do red eye flights which theoretically should allow them to reset operations overnight. This does not seem to be working for some reason.

Because to reset the whole network, they need a lot more pilots than they actually have. Someone would have to fly all the planes around at night, but it can’t be the pilots who flew during the day (they need to sleep at night). Like any airline, Southwest does not keep many more pilots on the payroll than they need under normal operations.

Often the limiting factors for an airline aren't the planes, but the humans to operate them. If the pilots aren't in the right place and available to fly, then an overnight to reset the positions of the planes does nothing. Nevermind the fact that resetting the network would in fact burn up flight time which seems to be in short supply.

Agreed, SWA canceled 2000 flights over the weekend, seems like they should enough rested crew to reset.

I did see in the Dallas Morning News that SWA had schedule the most flights today since the start of the Covid.

>Dallas-based Southwest planned more than 3,600 flights on Sunday, the most of any day since the COVID-19 pandemic began, but nearly one-third of those were canceled.

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2021/10/10/sout...

The union explicitly denies that a sickout is occurring in that same statement you've quoted:

> There are false claims of job actions by Southwest Pilots currently gaining traction on social media and making their way into mainstream news. I can say with certainty that there are no work slowdowns or sickouts either related to the recent mandatory vaccine mandate or otherwise. Under the RLA, our Union is forbidden from taking job action to resolve labor disputes under these circumstances. SWAPA has not authorized, and will not condone, any job action.

Was anyone claiming that it was?

Many are speculating it's a possible or likely cause. Not sure anybody is claiming it's the cause.

The union explicitly has to deny this, even if it’s true, due to airline union regulations. Airline unions are restricted in what they can do.

Southwest runs 3 to 4K commercial flights per day, which is about 1 in 7 commercial flights overall in the US. They depend on aircraft doing many short hops over the course of a single day: 7 or 8 is not uncommon. When things go bad it tends to disrupt the system very badly.

These numbers come from the US DOT ontime database. You can access the data in ClickHouse at https://github.demo.trial.altinity.cloud:8443 (user=demo, password=demo). This is a public instance running on Altinity.Cloud.

>You can access the data in ClickHouse at https://github.demo.trial.altinity.cloud:8443 (user=demo, password=demo). This is a public instance running on Altinity.Cloud.

All I get is a white screen with the word "Ok"

My apologies. Here is the correct URL. It's the ClickHouse web UI.

https://github.demo.trial.altinity.cloud:8443/play?user=demo

For instructions on use, check out the following blog article.

https://altinity.com/blog/connecting-to-altinity-cloud-with-...

This seems like a strategy designed to kill airframes via sheer number of pressurization cycles?

Nope, it's how short-haul single-aisle aircraft are operated. They make money only when operating a flight, and the more you can squeeze in a day, the more money it will make.

That's why their life in years is usually significantly lower than medium/long-haul multi-aisle aircraft, which often get converted to freighters after retirement, since the main thing that matters is number of pressurisation cycles ( and fuel efficiency, but it's whole different story).

> This seems like a strategy designed to kill airframes via sheer number of pressurization cycles?

That's what planes are for - to use them. They are not museum pieces to be preserved.

It certainly wears them out. Hawiian Air has the highest number of pressurization cycles of any US commercial airline (at least as far as I can tell--ontime data shows up to 18). So far they seem to have managed it without issues.

Another airline in the region, Aloha Air, did suffer an inflight fatality in 1988 when the fuselage ruptured. The cause was apparently poor maintenance. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243

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