Members of the US Senate are hearing from Southwest airlines and its employees today about why the company had so many flight cancellations in December that stranded thousands of passengers, and how they can stop the same thing from happening again.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology committee and says the estimated 17,000 cancellations may have started because of weather but continued because of failures at Southwest.
Cruz called Southwest's problems an "epic screw-up." He says Southwest "most days, does a fantastic job," but in December, tens of thousands missed Christmas at home because of "very serious failures."
Casey Murray of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association also testified saying Southwest has been ignoring warnings that something like this could happen.
"We've been sounding the alarm" Murray said, adding the airline has become a darling of investors but, "warning signs were ignored." He says Southwest now struggles to handle almost any disruption.
Although Southwest CEO Bob Jordan was not able to make the hearings due to previous commitments, Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson apologized for the poor performance of the company and told the committee that Southwest is already taking action to adjust if crews and planes wind up out of place.
Watterson says new scheduling software will go live Friday, but he says the greater issue is winter weather resiliency, and he that'll take longer to deal with.
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