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Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

SWA continues to try to push this weather excuse and ATC excuse... but it doesn't make any sense.

Weather in Florida impacted flights in Las Vegas and San Diego? The pilots and crews flying those routes aren't the same ones flying the Florida routes, which definitely do not make up 30%+ of all SWA flights.

Despite the weather in Florida and ATC issues revolving around the Naval exercises, all other airlines are making their flights and not cancelling anything near the number SWA is...

I don't know if this means it's a covid vaccine mandate thing or something else - it seems it would be illegal for pilots to walk-out in an organized manner, which might be why the union also claims it is not an organized walkout.

Whatever the problem is, it would not surprise me if SWA is blowing smoke here...

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>Weather in Florida impacted flights in Las Vegas and San Diego?

The article addresses this point. Up to 50% of Southwest's lines pass through Florida:

“The big issue is that Florida is roughly 15% of our trips, but on any given day, upwards of 50% of our aircraft lines flow through Florida,” Jordan told TPG. “You’ve got all those lines that just stopped in Florida, so you’ve got a lot of aircraft caught up in that,” he said.

Then why is Southwest the only airline in the news? Wouldn’t weather impact all airlines equally

Southwest is notable for being different; they use a single aircraft type, point-to-point routing over hubs, and started the low-cost airline trend.

The same argument applies to the vaccine hypothesis, incidentally. If it was the mandates, the other airlines who instituted mandates should've been similarly affected.

That is also addressed in the article.

> Jordan said it was particularly the line-flow system that Southwest uses as part of a point-to-point network that made it harder for Southwest to recover than other airlines with heavy exposure in Florida, such as American, which has a hub in Miami as part of its hub-and-spoke network.

> “We’re not hub and spoke, and we do very little out-and-back,” Jordan said. “So when you stop a line, you’re stopping a line where the aircraft is attempting to flow across the country.”

Isn't Chicago Midway a de facto hub for Southwest, even though they don't call it that?

Yes, SWA has 11 hubs, even though they refuse to call them that. There's even a list on the wikipedia[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines

Southwest was affected by far the largest, being the largest. But they are not the only ones affected.

Anecdotal but I've heard from friends about scheduling (and other) issues with SWA. And when I flew SWA two months ago they had to put me in a hotel for a night due to a 6 hour late flight making me miss my connection. So yeah I'm guessing it's really what they say it is.

I live in South Florida and the weather has been exceptionally normal the past couple months. This past week, absolutely no medium or heavy storming or winds occurred in South Florida. Also, no other airlines based out of Florida had these issues.

Again, no other airline was impacted by this? Only 1 of 11 SWA hubs are in Florida[1], there is no way 50% of their aircraft go through Florida on any given day.

Continues to not make any sense.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines

Again, the article clearly addresses this. What is the incentive for both Southwest management and the Pilot's Union to lie?

“Flight delays and cancellations occurred for a few hours Friday afternoon due to widespread severe weather, military training, and limited staffing in one area of the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center,”

“We’re not hub and spoke, and we do very little out-and-back,” Jordan said. “So when you stop a line, you’re stopping a line where the aircraft is attempting to flow across the country.”

The Management lies because admitting their policy led to a cancellation of 30%+ of flights in one day would be devastating.

Union lies because an organized walk-out is illegal.

Seriously... no other airline is impacted by the weather and ATC issues? The FAA even released a statement contradicting SWA's official excuse.

> The FAA even released a statement contradicting SWA's official excuse.

Where? They're on record supporting the weather and staffing explanations.

https://twitter.com/FAANews/status/1447249660884754441

"Flight delays & cancellations occurred for a few hours Friday PM due to widespread severe weather, military training, & limited staffing in one area of the Jacksonville en route center."

https://twitter.com/FAANews/status/1447708023724679175

"To be clear: None of the information from Southwest, its pilots union, or the FAA indicates that this weekend’s cancellations were related to vaccine mandates."

They just don't want to be blamed for the cascading failure that took days to resolve.

https://www.mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2021/10/11/southwes...

"No FAA air traffic staffing shortages have been reported since Friday."

SWA originally said ATC shortage... which isn't true.

Regardless, "severe weather" in Jacksonville doesn't impact a regional route like LAX -> SJC... why is that cancelled today?

> SWA originally said ATC shortage... which isn't true.

"No FAA air traffic staffing shortages have been reported since Friday" implies there were shortages on Friday, yes?

> Regardless, "severe weather" in Jacksonville doesn't impact a regional route like LAX -> SJC... why is that cancelled today?

It does if the plane flying that route was coming from Florida the night before.

> limited staffing in one area of the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center

They're still saying ATC shortage. Source on that not being true?

Other airlines like Delta fly hub and spoke. For example, when I want to fly somewhere on Delta I take a short flight to ATL and then go from there. That flight from my town to ATL happens 5-6x/day. If my town has bad weather, it's mostly only that flight that is impacted.

SW does point to point flows. A SW flight might only leave from my town once/day on its way to the next stop and then another. If we have bad weather, all the stops down the line are impacted.

Planes are also not the only issue. Crews have strict rules about how much downtime they have to have, so any delays can mean crews run out of flight time.

Airline scheduling is complicated.

Southwest has a unique scheduling model where most of the flights are on multi-hop trips, as opposed to other airlines where most or at least many flights are to/from a hub.

If you're doing mostly east/west multi-hop trips, it doesn't seem unreasonable for a lot of those to touch Florida. It's a popular destination.

It's not suprising that an airline with unique routing faces unique challenges.

Folks, hub-spoke, multi-hops, Florida hub, whatever - none of it matters when a simple 30 minute flight between Los Angeles and San Jose are being cancelled too[1].

Perhaps this LAX -> SJC flight happens to pass through Florida too? Come on... the crews flying these regional routes are the same crews that do it all day every day. Why are these flights impacted too?

[1] https://flightaware.com/live/fleet/SWA/cancelled

> Perhaps this LAX -> SJC flight happens to pass through Florida too?

The route, no. The aircraft, very possibly. An aircraft that flew from MIA to LAX last night might be the one intended to fly the LAX to SJC flight today. The flight crew aren't glued to the plane.

I mean... which specific LAX -> SJC flight did you have in mind?

Flight 3027[1] does LAX -> SJC, but first it does TPA (Tampa) -> STL (St Louis), and STL -> LAX.

There may be some back and forth flights, but if that plane goes back to LAX right away, it's probably flight 2497 [2], which goes to BWI (Baltimore) after LAX.

If that plane can't leave Florida in the morning, there goes your noon flight to SJC, and your early afternoon flight to LAX. Plus, the plane may not have made it to Baltimore and the schedule is messed up the next day too.

[1] https://www.southwest.com/air/flight-status/path.html?depart...

[2] https://www.southwest.com/air/flight-status/path.html?depart...

You really have no idea how airline scheduling works. A typical trip pairing for a cockpit crew is for 4 or 5 days going all over the country. Start in Atlanta, fly to Miami, back to Atlanta, then to Vegas, sleep there, next morning back to Atlanta, then on to Phoenix, and back to Atlanta again, on to Houston and sleep there. Etc etc for 4 days in a row. So a problem in Miami could easily cause delays and cancellations on a flight that to you looks totally unrelated.

The only reason you have less impact in a traditional hub and spoke system is that there are extra aircraft and reserve crews in the hubs (some are at the airport, some at home at a few hours notice) and every other flight passes through the hub. So if the Atlanta to Miami and back thing goes really wrong, another crew and aircraft will fly the Atlanta to Vegas flight and sometimes the rest of the trip.

Doesn't happen for a simple delay, but if the delay pushes the crew over their duty time limits on the outbound flight for example the return to hub would be cancelled and a reserve crew would pick up the next flights starting from the hub. The timed-out crew would go to be hotel and fly back as a passenger with the next days flight.

Bad weather in some regions can certainly affect flights in others. If planes in Florida are needed on the west coast and cant leave because of the weather that affects the flights on the west coast.

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