By David Shepardson and Rajesh Kumar Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Southwest Airlines will face sharp questions from U.S. senators as a hearing began on Thursday investigating the airline’s meltdown that disrupted travel plans for 2 million customers.
The airline and its pilot union offered sharply contrasting reasons for the low-cost carrier’s massive travel disruptions. While Southwest cited weather impacts, the union singled out poor preparation and a failure to modernize technology, according to written testimonies for the hearing seen by Reuters.
Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrews Watterson acknowledged that the airline made mistakes: “Let me be clear: we messed up. In hindsight, we did not have enough winter operational resilience.”
Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell said, “The American people have a lot of questions about the Southwest debacle in December that left passengers stranded or unable to be with loved ones over the holidays. … I’m interested in hearing the pilots testimony that this debacle could have been avoided if Southwest had made investments sooner.”
The meltdown caused the cancellation of almost 17,000 flights and is estimated to have cost the airline more than $1 billion. It has also prompted a lawsuit from shareholders and a Department of Transportation investigation.
The Dallas-based airline attributed the breakdown in service to a “historic” winter storm, both in size and scale, that caused frozen jet bridges and icy aircraft engines.
It has also defended its computer system, saying the technology “worked as designed,” while adding that the airline has tapped General Electric Co to improve crew rescheduling capability and hired consultant Oliver Wyman, a unit of Marsh McLennan, to recommend operational changes.
Watterson repeated that message in his testimony, saying that the airline experienced a “historic event” with a combination of challenges it had not confronted before.
“What began as a weather event on Dec. 21 turned into a crew scheduling event by Dec. 24,” Watterson said.
But Southwest’s pilot union, which is in contract negotiations with Southwest, blamed the company and its leadership for a “failure” to modernize crew management processes and technology and to prepare for the storm.
Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), said that the union has been sounding the alarm about the carrier’s crew scheduling technology and “outdated” operational processes for years.
“Unfortunately, those warnings were summarily ignored,” he said.
The debacle has put Chief Executive Bob Jordan in the eye of a storm as he faces pressure to restore the airline’s credibility and regain the trust of customers just one year after he took the helm.
Jordan has apologized and taken responsibility for the troubles, vowing to prevent a repeat.
Murray said that while Jordan inherited a “massive, complex operation held together by duct tape and baling wire,” he must show through actions that the company is serious about change.
The committee had asked Jordan to testify but Southwest said the hearing conflicted with other commitments, including an employee rally in Baltimore on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh and David Shepardson; Editing by Josie Kao)
