32 ms·

Southwest new CEO denies walk-off rumors, defends pilots amid schedule meltdown

185 points by edward 5y ago

seanw444 5y ago
Still makes me nose-exhale a bit when I hear "Biden made me do it! I had to, to follow the law! After all, it's an executive order." There's no standing executive order mandating anyone other than federal employees to be vaccinated, and there likely won't be. This CEO trying to brush off responsibility for the results of his poor choice is really annoying to see.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > There's no standing executive order mandating anyone other than federal employees to be vaccinated... Federal employees and contractors. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-mandate-major-airlines/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-mandate-major-... "Airlines are considered government contractors under Mr. Biden's federal vaccine plan."
walrus01 5y ago
Anecdotally I don't know a single licensed pilot who is antivaccine. They generally all have a high degree of respect for science and engineering. The idea that masses of southwest pilots suddenly decided to "sick out" to protest a vaccine mandate is laughable. I would bet good money that the vaccination rate among Southwest pilots is probably 85%+.
- lucaspm98 5y ago
  I somewhat doubt a large scale sickout occurred, but being anti-COVID vaccine and anti-COVID vaccine mandate for continued employment are two separate issues.
- Alupis 5y ago
  Well, seems you are pretty wrong[1]. There's plenty of highly educated people that respect both science and engineering, but do not support mandatory COVID vaccines for a plethora of reasons. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-09/southwest-air-pilots-seek-to-block-covid-vaccination-mandate https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-09/southwest...
  - anoonmoose 5y ago
    Your appeal to authority reminded me of when "Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth" managed to sucker me into believing their conspiracy theories when I was in undergrad.
    - walrus01 5y ago
      The name of that organization reminds me of the covid19 conspiracy theorists/antivaxxers at "America's Frontline Doctors". Turns out you can just name an organization anything you want to make it appear legit. Time to sign up for some horse paste ordered via internet! https://time.com/6092368/americas-frontline-doctors-covid-19-misinformation/ https://time.com/6092368/americas-frontline-doctors-covid-19...
      - BurnGpuBurn 5y ago
        Do you realize that the "horse paste" meme was launched directy after Joe Rogan got Covid and cured himself by taking Ivermectine? Makes you think, doesn't it?
        anoonmoose 5y ago
        One, I think your timeline is wrong (Rogan got it early Sept. [1] but even the FDA was making "you're not a horse" jokes in late August [2]), and two, just because Rogan took it and got better doesn't mean it's what cured him (I believe he took multiple medications/treatments and most people his age recover from COVID regardless) [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/media/joe-rogan-covid/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/media/joe-rogan-covid/index.h... [2] https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1429050070243192839 https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1429050070243192839
  - margalabargala 5y ago
    Nothing in that link contradicts anything the OP said. It has no statistics for pilot vaccination rates, and OP never said anything about mandatory vaccines, commenting only on the likely number of pilots who had already received a vaccine. There are two different issues at play here: whether someone has gotten the vaccine themselves, and whether someone supports making it mandatory. The person you replied to was talking about the former, you appear to have misunderstood it as the latter.
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  Opposing mandates isn’t anti-vaccine or anti-science.
  - josephorjoe 5y ago
    what is it then? pro-prolonging-the-pandemic i think if someone finds themself on Team Keep the Pandemic Going, they should reconsider what brought them there.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      The virus is endemic now, the pandemic is over. Get vaccinated if you wish, most people already have natural immunity.
      - hall0ween 5y ago
        Citation?
    - Zpalmtree 5y ago
      why aren't we locking everyone in a 2m cage with food delivered by drone to stop the pandemic faster
    - tomp 5y ago
      People who've had the disease have no reason to get vaccinated, denying that is simply denying data&science. In any case, the pandemic won't end when everyone's vaccinated, but instead when everyone stops being afraid of it; the virus cannot be stopped (at least not with the current version of the vaccines) so the only change possible is the society's reaction to it.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Anti-science is religion which is blindly following a myth. Are you blinding following the myth that covid will go away if everyone gets a shot? Anyone who doesn't have one is holding this up?
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Science is about waiting for the long term studies, taking in new information and asking questions & running experiments to proof theories. Shutting down other opinions is anti-science. The word science is being used when political should be.
  - ShamelessC 5y ago
    Peer review is a fundamental tenet of science.
- shadilay 5y ago
  This is a strange attitude given that the highest level of vaccine hesitancy is among the most educated. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Is it that laughable? Aren’t many pilots former military pilots? Perhaps they just respect civil liberties and view bodily autonomy as a fundamental right that is being unconstitutionally eroded by executive order after executive order. The ACLU felt vaccine mandates were both a violation of civil liberties and unconstitutional until only very recently, when they shifted positions due to their growing partisanship.
  - javagram 5y ago
    Your point cuts the other way - anyone who has joined the military showed they are accepting of vaccine mandates and are okay with giving up their bodily autonomy in this sphere. The military mandates service members receive between 9 and 17 different vaccines before COVID had ever been heard of. https://www.yahoo.com/now/17-vaccines-mandated-us-military-165900126.html https://www.yahoo.com/now/17-vaccines-mandated-us-military-1...
    - throwawaysea 5y ago
      My point is slightly different. I’m making the claim that those who serve vow to defend the constitution, and regardless of their personal choice, they are likely to dislike authoritarian mandates that go against civil liberty and the constitution.
    - pedroma 5y ago
      Maybe there's hesitancy because the mRNA vaccine is relatively untested compared to all those other vaccines that were mandated.
      - javagram 5y ago
        Perhaps, but there's an FDA EUA for an adenovirus-based vaccine (Johnson and Johnson) if one is simply scared of the mRNA technology. An adenovirus-based vaccine was already submitted for approval in 2019 for Ebola, and approved midway through 2020 after years of trials, so we know the technology wasn't rushed because of COVID.
newbamboo 5y ago
Great iq test. Ask people if they think “it’s the weather” is the true cause.
- zenithd 5y ago
  You're correct, but presumably in the wrong direction given your comment history. Any time a complex system fails, smart folks dig into precipitating and root causes while ideological idiots dream of conspiracy. I've actually seen this is professional contexts, where idiots blamed a series of hardware failures on employee sabotage. Turns out there was a component with a 1-in-10,000,000[^1] failure rate that was failing almost exactly 1-in-10,000,000 times and the distribution of the failures was clustered by pure accident. [^1]: Or something like that. It was a decade ago.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?s=20 https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?...
    - brendoelfrendo 5y ago
      Idk who Benny Johnson is, but he certainly seems like a reliable and unbiased source of commentary /s
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        That's either a really good fake rendering of an airplane or it looks exactly like southwest's airliner. Or maybe he snuck up to a real one and hung the flag himself /s (edit: the "controversial tweet") https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?s=20 https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?...
        brendoelfrendo 5y ago
        Well, let's thank that one pilot who is obviously flying for refusing to fly to stick up for his beliefs. Wait a minute...
google234123 5y ago
Please educate me on this: if there was a “sick-out", wouldn't it be in the interest of the management to admit it to shame/pressure those participating? What's the interest in hiding it (if it's true)?
- cpeterso 5y ago
  Management doesn't want potential customers to worry that their flights might get canceled and instead schedule flights with another airline.
  - speedybird 5y ago
    Well it's a bit too late for that I think. For years when I've flown, I fly with Southwest without a second thought about it (except when flying in the PNW, then I prefer Alaskan.) Well over the past few days I've been working with family to make plans for this Christmas and I found myself thinking that it might be prudent to look at other airlines this time. I'm not completely confident that Southwest won't collapse completely and upset my plans. I don't know what's happening in that company but things smell rotten and I've lost my confidence about their future. Maybe this isn't a realistic concern, but if I'm thinking it I wager I'm not the only one.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  Because a lot of customers are on "the other side" and are against mandates. If you ostracize those customers, you could be doing long term damage still.
- strstr 5y ago
  Shame sounds like a bad way to retain otherwise reasonable employees.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  The theory being spread around is that pilots had a sick-out because they oppose Southwest's vaccine mandate, based on fears about blood clots + flying.
bpodgursky 5y ago
Might be true. Might not. But the CEO isn't going to say "oh yeah our policies created a walkoff", so I don't see how this adds any information value.
- jasonlaramburu 5y ago
  The article also says the head of the pilot's association denied it was a protest against vaccine mandates. Why would they lie?
  - Alupis 5y ago
    The union is denying there is an official action... and my understanding is it would be illegal for the union members to organize a walkout like this since it jeopardizes the public. Individuals deciding to do something on their own though... can't be stopped.
    - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
      The Union denies it was an official or unofficial action. Both the pilots union and SWA management also confirm there was not an unusually high number of sick calls. Again, what incentive would they have to lie? Further why would a generally conservative-leaning private company and public union go to such great lengths to defend a mandate they have nothing to do with? It sounds like a conspiracy theory.
      - Alupis 5y ago
        You are putting a lot of stock into a PR piece... SWA is attempting to manage the damage to their brand. It's pretty obvious. And again, the Union has to deny everything. Any organized walk-out, or something they knew would happen and did nothing to stop ("official or unofficial") is illegal.
        jasonlaramburu 5y ago
        >You are putting a lot of stock into a PR piece... No, I believe that absent contrary evidence, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely. I've seen virtually every other US carrier experience a cascading failure due to weather or computer failures at least once over the past 10 years. I've also seen how quickly certain politicians, who stand to benefit personally from casting doubt on vaccine mandates, have jumped on this event.
Alupis 5y ago
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...
- jasonlaramburu 5y ago
  >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.
  - nafix 5y ago
    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.
  - Alupis 5y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines
    - toast0 5y ago
wyldfire 5y ago
> The Southwest Airline Pilots Association (SWAPA), the union representing pilots at the airline, similarly denied there was a job action — official or otherwise. I gotta admit, when I first heard these denials I assumed that the union was cautiously not confessing to a sick-out. But instead it seems as if disinformation is spinning current events to change perception about the Executive's new policy. Sadly, even after it's fact-checked - people won't remember the fact that it was bogus nor will they count it as a strike against the source that reported it.
- slg 5y ago
  >But instead it seems as if disinformation is spinning current events to change perception about the Executive's new policy. Sadly, even after it's fact-checked - people won't remember the fact that it was bogus nor will they count it as a strike against the source that reported it. What might help us remember is to name and shame the people responsible. Ted Cruz claimed to have heard this from multiple people including the leader of the union who you quoted denying it.
  - rPlayer6554 5y ago
    Source on this?
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Some politicians are bulletproof to "name and shame", their supporters will even blank out or excuse away that they did something shameful... Because if those supporters admit (ultimately to themselves) that the people they voted for were cheap scammers, how does that look on their self-belief that they're intelligent people? They'd rather twist reality to not shatter said self-belief.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      I will never understand the career of Willie Brown. Literally hundreds of fake mayor jobs, many of which were assigned to mistresses, massive theft of public funds, legendary and brazen corruption, and yet he's still a well-loved figure.
cpeterso 5y ago
I flew Southwest yesterday (in California, not Florida). My flight was delayed 30 minutes, but I heard other Southwest flights at the same airport had been canceled. This morning, Southwest sent me a customer satisfaction survey email with questions specific to flight delays. Seems like they are testing how much their brand was impacted by these problems, perhaps anticipating the delays will continue from worker action (that every denies)? If the problems truly were caused by some temporary issues that have been resolved, why would they bother surveying customers about it?
- wyldfire 5y ago
  What ratio of customers got survey requests in the year(s) leading up to yours? We need a baseline before we can determine whether or not your survey was initiated atypically.
- tppiotrowski 5y ago
  The airline could send custom surveys based on your specific flight/seat. If you sit in first class, "How did you enjoy the first class experience?". If you ordered food, "Did you enjoy your meal?". If your flight is delayed, "Did the delay impact your plans?" I think we both have zero evidence to back our claims so I wouldn't read too much into it.
- javert 5y ago
  Because there are people at Southwest whose job is to do surveys, and they want it to look like they are contributing.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    And surveys are just ubiquitous these days for every hopefully routine transaction because everyone wants to be able to be "data-driven." Which in principle is not a bad thing but there are so many of them that I pretty much ignore surveys at this point.
- brendoelfrendo 5y ago
  > If the problems truly were caused by some temporary issues that have been resolved, why would they bother surveying customers about it? Two reasons come to mind: 1) This weekend's delays might get sorted, but the underlying cause is still there. It's just not a pilot walkout, but an overall lack of resilience in their workforce and infrastructure. 2) The holiday season is coming. Southwest is already stretched thin and is probably trying to gauge what kind of reckoning is waiting for them if they have to cancel thousands of flights during the busiest travel period of the year (and one where snow delays are a real possibility for much of the country).
vyrotek 5y ago
These were the bits I found the most interesting which led to issues. > “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,” > “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,” > “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.”
- kitteh 5y ago
  There's another forum where a Jacksonville ARTCC controller echoed they had 15 people call out (not due to some anti vax movement) and had weather looming on top of the military who takes over half their airspace and doesn't give it back promptly (or the FAA gets the word but doesn't pass it along). Combined with constant understaffing and the fact that JAX can't stop departures from places like Atlanta (but other centers can) doesn't help.
- amluto 5y ago
  This sounds like they should consider having pre-prepared backup plans that allows bypassing various parts of the country.
  - HillRat 5y ago
    There really isn’t a way to do that — airline operations are based around renting “slots” from airports that give takeoff and landing rights at specified times. Slots are expensive, so you build your operations and maintenance plans around them. You just don’t have an option to build unused backstop routes and the logistics around them, so either you’re bumping folks onto other carriers or having them wait for your congestion issues to ease.
    - lisper 5y ago
ironSkillet 5y ago
This is probably another recent example where a system that operates with very little slack can have massive failures due to localized perturbations in network dynamics.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  That's fine. Southwest is more targeted at leisure travel, so they can get away with this. The legacy carriers have somewhat more resilient networks.
- andrewflnr 5y ago
  I've said it before and I'll say it again: we need a global reckoning on the tradeoff between efficiency and resilience.
  - ironSkillet 5y ago
    The problem is that capitalism (as it is currently configured) strongly incentivizes short term efficiency. Very few organizations plan for long tail events because it almost inevitably hurts short term expected value, even though long term expected value would potentially benefit.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Supply chain resilience is incredibly expensive insurance for very rare and relatively short term disruptive events. Covid for instance is going to put things out of whack for two or three years, but is preventing that worth paying up for the redundancy and contingency plans over the previous 100 years? Probably not. Over the long term, efficiency wins out.
    - speedybird 5y ago
      > We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Not really, no. We can probably count on more resilient products being more expensive, but we can't count on more expensive products being more resilient. It doesn't work that way. There is really no way for an average consumer to know which expensive products are expensive because they are sold by resilient companies, and which are expensive for innumerable other reasons. Most purchases are made by people who lack the knowledge, experience or training that would be required to evaluate the resilience of a business. Voting for something without knowledge about that something is farcical. Ultimately this "voting" is little more than rhetoric used to push the blame onto those with the least insight into how the system works.
twolf910616 5y ago
This might be some sort of fallacy, but when FoxNews quickly and swiftly points out that this is a vaccine mandate related case, that's a good barometer for me that it isn't.
- walrus01 5y ago
  As a correlation, when it's being touted as the most shocking news ever on OANN, newsmax and the washington times, in addition to fox news, you can be absolutely sure it's absurd.
paxys 5y ago
Flight scheduling is not very different from a complex manufacturing supply chain. Low-cost carriers like Southwest heavily optimize their routes to have as little leeway in the system as possible, and thus a simple disruption can have massive consequences. On one hand you can undercut all your competitors by $10, on the other 50% of your operation is reliant on Florida.
- walrus01 5y ago
  Look what happened when a network and IT issue took out some essential planning software: https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/southwests-computer-outage-cancels-hundreds-of-flights https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/southwests-comp... https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/cox/2019/04/02/delta-southwest-american-computer-outage-flight-delays/3343814002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/cox/2019/04/... google "computer network outage flight disruption" for many, many historical previous examples of similar.
lettergram 5y ago
The CEO literally says he’s not in favor of vaccine mandates, but has to with the Biden administrations orders https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/1447926165834960908 https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/1447926165834960908 I think it’s fair to say, the pilots might just be using up vacation time before they’re fired. Essentially, an uncoordinated sit in where pilots just don’t want to deal with it any more. I can’t blame them.
- hammock 5y ago
  The interesting part is, Biden hasn't issued an order yet. But Texas' governor has - prohibiting any mandate.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Abbott's being performative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause
    - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
      The State's prohibition affected city and county policies which had to be changed. It was noticeable in school districts of large cities, so clearly not performative.
      - javagram 5y ago
        Abbott just issued a new order which applies to private businesses, not just cities and counties. That one is arguably performative, since OSHA and HHS are federal agencies and their requirements will override Texas law under the supremacy clause of the constitution.
        readflaggedcomm 5y ago
        There are more than one, which provides an opportunity to always say someone is wrong in what one or the other means. Thanks for that.
pixl97 5y ago
Juan Brown at the blancolirio channel (of Oroville dam fame) did a video on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO39nIcuPhQ&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO39nIcuPhQ&t
kyleblarson 5y ago
Additionally if the airline claims it's because of the weather they don't have to put people up in hotels and cover their meals.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  Is that true if there is a weather problem anywhere in the chain of events? It would seem reasonable to treat travelers differently if weather is the direct cause of a problem versus one of the dominoes in a long chain of events.
dreyfan 5y ago
This post is an excellent reminder that even HN is not immune to rampant conspiracy theorists and to take everything with a grain of salt. HNers are not uniquely intelligent nor capable.
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  Labeling something a "conspiracy theory" is intellectual laziness and not a rebuttal in any shape or form.
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    The problem is that it takes far more effort to dispel and debunk BS than it does to create and spread it in the first place. By the time anyone has the chance to conclusively debunk this tripe, the creators are already miles away on their next grift.
    - seanw444 5y ago
      Well then it's time and effort well-spent. Saying "that's a conspiracy" won't change anybody's mind, and they'll still be on their next grift.
    - TeeMassive 5y ago
      > the creators are already miles away on their next grift That's just a conspiracy theory
- hunterb123 5y ago
  What are you considering is the conspiracy theory? The walk off happened, just because the CEO says it didn't, doesn't make it so. https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?s=20 https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?...
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    The CEO, the union, the FAA, and the fact that they're getting back to normal all say the walk-off didn't happen. "We didn’t see sick leave beyond normal. In fact, we saw our crews picking up open time to the extent that they could."
m0zg 5y ago
Looks like Alaska Airlines is about to start "denying" as well, and blaming cancellations on weather events that affect only Alaska: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1448456332798013442 https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1448456332798013442 And American Airlines is also mass-cancelling and delaying an unusual percentage of flights. Damn, the asymptomatic weather is getting worse and worse. Let's go, Brandon!
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  If this is true, you can do better than known far-right grifter extraordinaire Jack Posobiec of all people. Sad to see this tripe spreading on HN.
  - m0zg 5y ago
    Well, can't get any of this from the "free" press, so how else do we reconcile reality on the ground with its side effects. Maybe if the press actually worked on reporting news rather than pushing narratives we wouldn't have to resort to pictures from the ground. Or maybe not. Just don't be surprised if your flight gets canceled, store shelves are empty, or if you go to the hospital and nurses are on strike. "Weather" can be quite severe this time of year.
    - knownjorbist 5y ago
      The smugness and assuredness with which you deliver these predictions is pretty on-brand for the kinds of marks who think they're in some special club, who are "in" on what "the media"(the part that disagrees with you) doesn't want you to see. The "reality on the ground" - as told by the right wing social media grift-o-sphere. Their track record is literally on par with a broken clock being right twice a day. Some empty shelves in some stores somewhere are not evidence that you are right about Biden's hidden communist agenda. Just like there is not about to be a walkout of major airline pilots. This particular incident just lines up with the anti-mandate media blitz in the circles you engross yourself in, and will be forgotten as soon as it doesn't pan out - just like virtually every other political bludgeon the fox news cinematic universe conjures forth.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Emergent behavior doesn't need to be organized. There doesn't need to be a union nor a secret clubhouse nor an email chain for people who believe they will soon lose their jobs to make use of their accumulated sick leave, especially if it cannot be converted into vacation days, which are paid out when employment is terminated. I don't know what's in the employment contact at SWA but everywhere I've worked paid out unused vacation days but never paid out for unused sick leave. Similar people in similar situations often make similar decisions without coordination.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  All of that is true, but the article cites the company officially stating: > We didn’t see sick leave beyond normal.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    If pilots being sick caused cancellations they would be on the hook paying for refunds and hotel rooms. If the reason is weather, they aren't. Their incentives here are somewhat obvious.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      There's a "don't get smacked by the SEC for materially false statements from the CEO affecting the share price" incentive at play here, too. (Not to mention the FAA publicly backs up the weather, staffing, and military exercise set of explanations.)
      - kfprt 5y ago
        When was the last time the SEC actually went after a big corporation?
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Recently? https://www.sec.gov/enforce/selected-division-enforcement-accomplishments-december-2016-december-2020 https://www.sec.gov/enforce/selected-division-enforcement-ac... Facebook, Tesla, Nissan, GE, Wells Fargo, Rio Tinto...
dade_ 5y ago
Zerohedge’s source was Ron Paul, who was apparently making stuff up: https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/southwest-cancels-hundreds-more-flights-monday-ron-paul-opines-great-rebellion-over https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/southwest-cancels-hundred... http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/october/11/the-great-southwest-airlines-rebellion/ http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2...
- bjowen 5y ago
  Sounds like a similar tactic to blaming the Texas blackout on renewable energy. An event that irritates the general public is fertile ground for opportunists to be first to press with something from ideology rather than information.
  - addicted 5y ago
    This is the unfortunate consequence of a significant portion of the US electorate not punishing, and even rewarding, politicians for simply lying, as long as it's lies that they agree with. You now have a group of politicians who will use any scenario where there is raised attention and tension to claim their particular issues are the cause for it because their supporters have absolutely no care for the truth value of what they are saying.
jakeogh 5y ago
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-joe-biden-attends-the-ceremony-at-the-national-911-memorial-picture-id1235181192?s=2048x2048 https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-joe-biden-att... sha3_256:581c6932ef7e90c49579225cf251d9179f9f77cd4c0e9cd2a9a6cf7d71e28bd2

185 points by edward 5y ago

Still makes me nose-exhale a bit when I hear "Biden made me do it! I had to, to follow the law! After all, it's an executive order." There's no standing executive order mandating anyone other than federal employees to be vaccinated, and there likely won't be. This CEO trying to brush off responsibility for the results of his poor choice is really annoying to see.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> There's no standing executive order mandating anyone other than federal employees to be vaccinated... Federal employees and contractors. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-mandate-major-airlines/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-mandate-major-... "Airlines are considered government contractors under Mr. Biden's federal vaccine plan."

walrus01 5y ago

Anecdotally I don't know a single licensed pilot who is antivaccine. They generally all have a high degree of respect for science and engineering. The idea that masses of southwest pilots suddenly decided to "sick out" to protest a vaccine mandate is laughable. I would bet good money that the vaccination rate among Southwest pilots is probably 85%+.

lucaspm98 5y ago
I somewhat doubt a large scale sickout occurred, but being anti-COVID vaccine and anti-COVID vaccine mandate for continued employment are two separate issues.
Alupis 5y ago
Well, seems you are pretty wrong[1]. There's plenty of highly educated people that respect both science and engineering, but do not support mandatory COVID vaccines for a plethora of reasons. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-09/southwest-air-pilots-seek-to-block-covid-vaccination-mandate https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-09/southwest...
- anoonmoose 5y ago
  Your appeal to authority reminded me of when "Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth" managed to sucker me into believing their conspiracy theories when I was in undergrad.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    The name of that organization reminds me of the covid19 conspiracy theorists/antivaxxers at "America's Frontline Doctors". Turns out you can just name an organization anything you want to make it appear legit. Time to sign up for some horse paste ordered via internet! https://time.com/6092368/americas-frontline-doctors-covid-19-misinformation/ https://time.com/6092368/americas-frontline-doctors-covid-19...
    - BurnGpuBurn 5y ago
      Do you realize that the "horse paste" meme was launched directy after Joe Rogan got Covid and cured himself by taking Ivermectine? Makes you think, doesn't it?
      - anoonmoose 5y ago
        One, I think your timeline is wrong (Rogan got it early Sept. [1] but even the FDA was making "you're not a horse" jokes in late August [2]), and two, just because Rogan took it and got better doesn't mean it's what cured him (I believe he took multiple medications/treatments and most people his age recover from COVID regardless) [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/media/joe-rogan-covid/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/media/joe-rogan-covid/index.h... [2] https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1429050070243192839 https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1429050070243192839
- margalabargala 5y ago
  Nothing in that link contradicts anything the OP said. It has no statistics for pilot vaccination rates, and OP never said anything about mandatory vaccines, commenting only on the likely number of pilots who had already received a vaccine. There are two different issues at play here: whether someone has gotten the vaccine themselves, and whether someone supports making it mandatory. The person you replied to was talking about the former, you appear to have misunderstood it as the latter.
CheezeIt 5y ago
Opposing mandates isn’t anti-vaccine or anti-science.
- josephorjoe 5y ago
  what is it then? pro-prolonging-the-pandemic i think if someone finds themself on Team Keep the Pandemic Going, they should reconsider what brought them there.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    The virus is endemic now, the pandemic is over. Get vaccinated if you wish, most people already have natural immunity.
    - hall0ween 5y ago
      Citation?
  - Zpalmtree 5y ago
    why aren't we locking everyone in a 2m cage with food delivered by drone to stop the pandemic faster
  - tomp 5y ago
    People who've had the disease have no reason to get vaccinated, denying that is simply denying data&science. In any case, the pandemic won't end when everyone's vaccinated, but instead when everyone stops being afraid of it; the virus cannot be stopped (at least not with the current version of the vaccines) so the only change possible is the society's reaction to it.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Anti-science is religion which is blindly following a myth. Are you blinding following the myth that covid will go away if everyone gets a shot? Anyone who doesn't have one is holding this up?
ipaddr 5y ago
Science is about waiting for the long term studies, taking in new information and asking questions & running experiments to proof theories. Shutting down other opinions is anti-science. The word science is being used when political should be.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  Peer review is a fundamental tenet of science.
shadilay 5y ago
This is a strange attitude given that the highest level of vaccine hesitancy is among the most educated. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...
throwawaysea 5y ago
Is it that laughable? Aren’t many pilots former military pilots? Perhaps they just respect civil liberties and view bodily autonomy as a fundamental right that is being unconstitutionally eroded by executive order after executive order. The ACLU felt vaccine mandates were both a violation of civil liberties and unconstitutional until only very recently, when they shifted positions due to their growing partisanship.
- javagram 5y ago
  Your point cuts the other way - anyone who has joined the military showed they are accepting of vaccine mandates and are okay with giving up their bodily autonomy in this sphere. The military mandates service members receive between 9 and 17 different vaccines before COVID had ever been heard of. https://www.yahoo.com/now/17-vaccines-mandated-us-military-165900126.html https://www.yahoo.com/now/17-vaccines-mandated-us-military-1...
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    My point is slightly different. I’m making the claim that those who serve vow to defend the constitution, and regardless of their personal choice, they are likely to dislike authoritarian mandates that go against civil liberty and the constitution.
  - pedroma 5y ago
    Maybe there's hesitancy because the mRNA vaccine is relatively untested compared to all those other vaccines that were mandated.
    - javagram 5y ago
      Perhaps, but there's an FDA EUA for an adenovirus-based vaccine (Johnson and Johnson) if one is simply scared of the mRNA technology. An adenovirus-based vaccine was already submitted for approval in 2019 for Ebola, and approved midway through 2020 after years of trials, so we know the technology wasn't rushed because of COVID.

newbamboo 5y ago

Great iq test. Ask people if they think “it’s the weather” is the true cause.

zenithd 5y ago
You're correct, but presumably in the wrong direction given your comment history. Any time a complex system fails, smart folks dig into precipitating and root causes while ideological idiots dream of conspiracy. I've actually seen this is professional contexts, where idiots blamed a series of hardware failures on employee sabotage. Turns out there was a component with a 1-in-10,000,000[^1] failure rate that was failing almost exactly 1-in-10,000,000 times and the distribution of the failures was clustered by pure accident. [^1]: Or something like that. It was a decade ago.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?s=20 https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?...
  - brendoelfrendo 5y ago
    Idk who Benny Johnson is, but he certainly seems like a reliable and unbiased source of commentary /s
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      That's either a really good fake rendering of an airplane or it looks exactly like southwest's airliner. Or maybe he snuck up to a real one and hung the flag himself /s (edit: the "controversial tweet") https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?s=20 https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?...
      - brendoelfrendo 5y ago
        Well, let's thank that one pilot who is obviously flying for refusing to fly to stick up for his beliefs. Wait a minute...

google234123 5y ago

Please educate me on this: if there was a “sick-out", wouldn't it be in the interest of the management to admit it to shame/pressure those participating? What's the interest in hiding it (if it's true)?

cpeterso 5y ago
Management doesn't want potential customers to worry that their flights might get canceled and instead schedule flights with another airline.
- speedybird 5y ago
  Well it's a bit too late for that I think. For years when I've flown, I fly with Southwest without a second thought about it (except when flying in the PNW, then I prefer Alaskan.) Well over the past few days I've been working with family to make plans for this Christmas and I found myself thinking that it might be prudent to look at other airlines this time. I'm not completely confident that Southwest won't collapse completely and upset my plans. I don't know what's happening in that company but things smell rotten and I've lost my confidence about their future. Maybe this isn't a realistic concern, but if I'm thinking it I wager I'm not the only one.
vineyardmike 5y ago
Because a lot of customers are on "the other side" and are against mandates. If you ostracize those customers, you could be doing long term damage still.
strstr 5y ago
Shame sounds like a bad way to retain otherwise reasonable employees.
bpodgursky 5y ago
The theory being spread around is that pilots had a sick-out because they oppose Southwest's vaccine mandate, based on fears about blood clots + flying.

bpodgursky 5y ago

Might be true. Might not. But the CEO isn't going to say "oh yeah our policies created a walkoff", so I don't see how this adds any information value.

jasonlaramburu 5y ago
The article also says the head of the pilot's association denied it was a protest against vaccine mandates. Why would they lie?
- Alupis 5y ago
  The union is denying there is an official action... and my understanding is it would be illegal for the union members to organize a walkout like this since it jeopardizes the public. Individuals deciding to do something on their own though... can't be stopped.
  - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
    The Union denies it was an official or unofficial action. Both the pilots union and SWA management also confirm there was not an unusually high number of sick calls. Again, what incentive would they have to lie? Further why would a generally conservative-leaning private company and public union go to such great lengths to defend a mandate they have nothing to do with? It sounds like a conspiracy theory.
    - Alupis 5y ago
      You are putting a lot of stock into a PR piece... SWA is attempting to manage the damage to their brand. It's pretty obvious. And again, the Union has to deny everything. Any organized walk-out, or something they knew would happen and did nothing to stop ("official or unofficial") is illegal.
      - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
        >You are putting a lot of stock into a PR piece... No, I believe that absent contrary evidence, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely. I've seen virtually every other US carrier experience a cascading failure due to weather or computer failures at least once over the past 10 years. I've also seen how quickly certain politicians, who stand to benefit personally from casting doubt on vaccine mandates, have jumped on this event.

Alupis 5y ago

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...

jasonlaramburu 5y ago
>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.
- nafix 5y ago
  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.
- Alupis 5y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines
  - toast0 5y ago

wyldfire 5y ago

> The Southwest Airline Pilots Association (SWAPA), the union representing pilots at the airline, similarly denied there was a job action — official or otherwise. I gotta admit, when I first heard these denials I assumed that the union was cautiously not confessing to a sick-out. But instead it seems as if disinformation is spinning current events to change perception about the Executive's new policy. Sadly, even after it's fact-checked - people won't remember the fact that it was bogus nor will they count it as a strike against the source that reported it.

slg 5y ago
>But instead it seems as if disinformation is spinning current events to change perception about the Executive's new policy. Sadly, even after it's fact-checked - people won't remember the fact that it was bogus nor will they count it as a strike against the source that reported it. What might help us remember is to name and shame the people responsible. Ted Cruz claimed to have heard this from multiple people including the leader of the union who you quoted denying it.
- rPlayer6554 5y ago
  Source on this?
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Some politicians are bulletproof to "name and shame", their supporters will even blank out or excuse away that they did something shameful... Because if those supporters admit (ultimately to themselves) that the people they voted for were cheap scammers, how does that look on their self-belief that they're intelligent people? They'd rather twist reality to not shatter said self-belief.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    I will never understand the career of Willie Brown. Literally hundreds of fake mayor jobs, many of which were assigned to mistresses, massive theft of public funds, legendary and brazen corruption, and yet he's still a well-loved figure.

cpeterso 5y ago

I flew Southwest yesterday (in California, not Florida). My flight was delayed 30 minutes, but I heard other Southwest flights at the same airport had been canceled. This morning, Southwest sent me a customer satisfaction survey email with questions specific to flight delays. Seems like they are testing how much their brand was impacted by these problems, perhaps anticipating the delays will continue from worker action (that every denies)? If the problems truly were caused by some temporary issues that have been resolved, why would they bother surveying customers about it?

wyldfire 5y ago
What ratio of customers got survey requests in the year(s) leading up to yours? We need a baseline before we can determine whether or not your survey was initiated atypically.
tppiotrowski 5y ago
The airline could send custom surveys based on your specific flight/seat. If you sit in first class, "How did you enjoy the first class experience?". If you ordered food, "Did you enjoy your meal?". If your flight is delayed, "Did the delay impact your plans?" I think we both have zero evidence to back our claims so I wouldn't read too much into it.
javert 5y ago
Because there are people at Southwest whose job is to do surveys, and they want it to look like they are contributing.
- ghaff 5y ago
  And surveys are just ubiquitous these days for every hopefully routine transaction because everyone wants to be able to be "data-driven." Which in principle is not a bad thing but there are so many of them that I pretty much ignore surveys at this point.
brendoelfrendo 5y ago
> If the problems truly were caused by some temporary issues that have been resolved, why would they bother surveying customers about it? Two reasons come to mind: 1) This weekend's delays might get sorted, but the underlying cause is still there. It's just not a pilot walkout, but an overall lack of resilience in their workforce and infrastructure. 2) The holiday season is coming. Southwest is already stretched thin and is probably trying to gauge what kind of reckoning is waiting for them if they have to cancel thousands of flights during the busiest travel period of the year (and one where snow delays are a real possibility for much of the country).

vyrotek 5y ago

These were the bits I found the most interesting which led to issues. > “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,” > “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,” > “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.”

kitteh 5y ago
There's another forum where a Jacksonville ARTCC controller echoed they had 15 people call out (not due to some anti vax movement) and had weather looming on top of the military who takes over half their airspace and doesn't give it back promptly (or the FAA gets the word but doesn't pass it along). Combined with constant understaffing and the fact that JAX can't stop departures from places like Atlanta (but other centers can) doesn't help.
amluto 5y ago
This sounds like they should consider having pre-prepared backup plans that allows bypassing various parts of the country.
- HillRat 5y ago
  There really isn’t a way to do that — airline operations are based around renting “slots” from airports that give takeoff and landing rights at specified times. Slots are expensive, so you build your operations and maintenance plans around them. You just don’t have an option to build unused backstop routes and the logistics around them, so either you’re bumping folks onto other carriers or having them wait for your congestion issues to ease.
  - lisper 5y ago

ironSkillet 5y ago

This is probably another recent example where a system that operates with very little slack can have massive failures due to localized perturbations in network dynamics.

dehrmann 5y ago
That's fine. Southwest is more targeted at leisure travel, so they can get away with this. The legacy carriers have somewhat more resilient networks.
andrewflnr 5y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: we need a global reckoning on the tradeoff between efficiency and resilience.
- ironSkillet 5y ago
  The problem is that capitalism (as it is currently configured) strongly incentivizes short term efficiency. Very few organizations plan for long tail events because it almost inevitably hurts short term expected value, even though long term expected value would potentially benefit.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Supply chain resilience is incredibly expensive insurance for very rare and relatively short term disruptive events. Covid for instance is going to put things out of whack for two or three years, but is preventing that worth paying up for the redundancy and contingency plans over the previous 100 years? Probably not. Over the long term, efficiency wins out.
  - speedybird 5y ago
    > We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Not really, no. We can probably count on more resilient products being more expensive, but we can't count on more expensive products being more resilient. It doesn't work that way. There is really no way for an average consumer to know which expensive products are expensive because they are sold by resilient companies, and which are expensive for innumerable other reasons. Most purchases are made by people who lack the knowledge, experience or training that would be required to evaluate the resilience of a business. Voting for something without knowledge about that something is farcical. Ultimately this "voting" is little more than rhetoric used to push the blame onto those with the least insight into how the system works.

twolf910616 5y ago

This might be some sort of fallacy, but when FoxNews quickly and swiftly points out that this is a vaccine mandate related case, that's a good barometer for me that it isn't.

walrus01 5y ago
As a correlation, when it's being touted as the most shocking news ever on OANN, newsmax and the washington times, in addition to fox news, you can be absolutely sure it's absurd.

paxys 5y ago

Flight scheduling is not very different from a complex manufacturing supply chain. Low-cost carriers like Southwest heavily optimize their routes to have as little leeway in the system as possible, and thus a simple disruption can have massive consequences. On one hand you can undercut all your competitors by $10, on the other 50% of your operation is reliant on Florida.

walrus01 5y ago
Look what happened when a network and IT issue took out some essential planning software: https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/southwests-computer-outage-cancels-hundreds-of-flights https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/southwests-comp... https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/cox/2019/04/02/delta-southwest-american-computer-outage-flight-delays/3343814002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/cox/2019/04/... google "computer network outage flight disruption" for many, many historical previous examples of similar.

lettergram 5y ago

The CEO literally says he’s not in favor of vaccine mandates, but has to with the Biden administrations orders https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/1447926165834960908 https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/1447926165834960908 I think it’s fair to say, the pilots might just be using up vacation time before they’re fired. Essentially, an uncoordinated sit in where pilots just don’t want to deal with it any more. I can’t blame them.

hammock 5y ago
The interesting part is, Biden hasn't issued an order yet. But Texas' governor has - prohibiting any mandate.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Abbott's being performative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause
  - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
    The State's prohibition affected city and county policies which had to be changed. It was noticeable in school districts of large cities, so clearly not performative.
    - javagram 5y ago
      Abbott just issued a new order which applies to private businesses, not just cities and counties. That one is arguably performative, since OSHA and HHS are federal agencies and their requirements will override Texas law under the supremacy clause of the constitution.
      - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
        There are more than one, which provides an opportunity to always say someone is wrong in what one or the other means. Thanks for that.

pixl97 5y ago

Juan Brown at the blancolirio channel (of Oroville dam fame) did a video on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO39nIcuPhQ&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO39nIcuPhQ&t

kyleblarson 5y ago

Additionally if the airline claims it's because of the weather they don't have to put people up in hotels and cover their meals.

gnicholas 5y ago
Is that true if there is a weather problem anywhere in the chain of events? It would seem reasonable to treat travelers differently if weather is the direct cause of a problem versus one of the dominoes in a long chain of events.

dreyfan 5y ago

This post is an excellent reminder that even HN is not immune to rampant conspiracy theorists and to take everything with a grain of salt. HNers are not uniquely intelligent nor capable.

TeeMassive 5y ago
Labeling something a "conspiracy theory" is intellectual laziness and not a rebuttal in any shape or form.
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  The problem is that it takes far more effort to dispel and debunk BS than it does to create and spread it in the first place. By the time anyone has the chance to conclusively debunk this tripe, the creators are already miles away on their next grift.
  - seanw444 5y ago
    Well then it's time and effort well-spent. Saying "that's a conspiracy" won't change anybody's mind, and they'll still be on their next grift.
  - TeeMassive 5y ago
    > the creators are already miles away on their next grift That's just a conspiracy theory
hunterb123 5y ago
What are you considering is the conspiracy theory? The walk off happened, just because the CEO says it didn't, doesn't make it so. https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?s=20 https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?...
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The CEO, the union, the FAA, and the fact that they're getting back to normal all say the walk-off didn't happen. "We didn’t see sick leave beyond normal. In fact, we saw our crews picking up open time to the extent that they could."

m0zg 5y ago

Looks like Alaska Airlines is about to start "denying" as well, and blaming cancellations on weather events that affect only Alaska: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1448456332798013442 https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1448456332798013442 And American Airlines is also mass-cancelling and delaying an unusual percentage of flights. Damn, the asymptomatic weather is getting worse and worse. Let's go, Brandon!

knownjorbist 5y ago
If this is true, you can do better than known far-right grifter extraordinaire Jack Posobiec of all people. Sad to see this tripe spreading on HN.
- m0zg 5y ago
  Well, can't get any of this from the "free" press, so how else do we reconcile reality on the ground with its side effects. Maybe if the press actually worked on reporting news rather than pushing narratives we wouldn't have to resort to pictures from the ground. Or maybe not. Just don't be surprised if your flight gets canceled, store shelves are empty, or if you go to the hospital and nurses are on strike. "Weather" can be quite severe this time of year.
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    The smugness and assuredness with which you deliver these predictions is pretty on-brand for the kinds of marks who think they're in some special club, who are "in" on what "the media"(the part that disagrees with you) doesn't want you to see. The "reality on the ground" - as told by the right wing social media grift-o-sphere. Their track record is literally on par with a broken clock being right twice a day. Some empty shelves in some stores somewhere are not evidence that you are right about Biden's hidden communist agenda. Just like there is not about to be a walkout of major airline pilots. This particular incident just lines up with the anti-mandate media blitz in the circles you engross yourself in, and will be forgotten as soon as it doesn't pan out - just like virtually every other political bludgeon the fox news cinematic universe conjures forth.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

Emergent behavior doesn't need to be organized. There doesn't need to be a union nor a secret clubhouse nor an email chain for people who believe they will soon lose their jobs to make use of their accumulated sick leave, especially if it cannot be converted into vacation days, which are paid out when employment is terminated. I don't know what's in the employment contact at SWA but everywhere I've worked paid out unused vacation days but never paid out for unused sick leave. Similar people in similar situations often make similar decisions without coordination.

ceejayoz 5y ago
All of that is true, but the article cites the company officially stating: > We didn’t see sick leave beyond normal.
- kfprt 5y ago
  If pilots being sick caused cancellations they would be on the hook paying for refunds and hotel rooms. If the reason is weather, they aren't. Their incentives here are somewhat obvious.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    There's a "don't get smacked by the SEC for materially false statements from the CEO affecting the share price" incentive at play here, too. (Not to mention the FAA publicly backs up the weather, staffing, and military exercise set of explanations.)
    - kfprt 5y ago
      When was the last time the SEC actually went after a big corporation?
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Recently? https://www.sec.gov/enforce/selected-division-enforcement-accomplishments-december-2016-december-2020 https://www.sec.gov/enforce/selected-division-enforcement-ac... Facebook, Tesla, Nissan, GE, Wells Fargo, Rio Tinto...

dade_ 5y ago

Zerohedge’s source was Ron Paul, who was apparently making stuff up: https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/southwest-cancels-hundreds-more-flights-monday-ron-paul-opines-great-rebellion-over https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/southwest-cancels-hundred... http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/october/11/the-great-southwest-airlines-rebellion/ http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2...

bjowen 5y ago
Sounds like a similar tactic to blaming the Texas blackout on renewable energy. An event that irritates the general public is fertile ground for opportunists to be first to press with something from ideology rather than information.
- addicted 5y ago
  This is the unfortunate consequence of a significant portion of the US electorate not punishing, and even rewarding, politicians for simply lying, as long as it's lies that they agree with. You now have a group of politicians who will use any scenario where there is raised attention and tension to claim their particular issues are the cause for it because their supporters have absolutely no care for the truth value of what they are saying.

jakeogh 5y ago

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-joe-biden-attends-the-ceremony-at-the-national-911-memorial-picture-id1235181192?s=2048x2048 https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-joe-biden-att... sha3_256:581c6932ef7e90c49579225cf251d9179f9f77cd4c0e9cd2a9a6cf7d71e28bd2