![]() Many of our people have been forced to work 16 or 18 hour days during this holiday season. The human factor also has to be a consideration. “When you’re dealing with sub-zero temperatures, driving winds and ice storms you can’t expect to schedule planes as if every day is a sunny day with moderate temperatures and a gentle breeze. If airline managers had planned better, the meltdown we’ve witnessed in recent days could have been lessened or averted. “When Southwest’s model changed” (from point-to-point), “preparation needed to change. The ground workers at Southwest Airlines are represented by Transport Workers Union (TWU). The Union is not willing to have their people blamed. If this part of the supply chain is not working, the snowball starts rolling and the whole chain breaks down. Ramp employees help planes park and handle the luggage. Ground operations in Denver were hampered by an unusually high number of absences among ramp employees. That led to the snowball effect that crippled operations.īut it was more than that. ![]() Southwest’s system, it turns out, could not keep track of where its crew members and pilots were after so many flights were canceled. What did happen?Īs soon as I heard how much worse Southwest was performing than their competitors, I knew there had to be an IT problem. But with the other models, bad things happening in one place can ripple through the system and lead to a cascading set of cancellations. If there is a plane flying between Richmond Virginia and Cincinnati Ohio - and something goes wrong – only the passengers on that route are affected. When it comes to resilience – recovering from something bad that happens – the simplicity of point-to-point beats hub-and-spoke or point-to point-to-point. But the point of all those options is to maximize profitability, not resilience.
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