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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 wides

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
    That's ridiculous. Yes, airlines have slots, but schedule changes, weather delays, mechanical delays, happen all the time. It's not like if you miss a slot you're just SOL. If you're flying from A to B to C to D to E to F and there's a bottleneck at B, you can deadhead the plane from A to C (or even take the pax who were going from A to C anyway) and pick up all the downstream connections. There are weather delays all the time. There are ATC problems all the time. But having either one of those turn into this kind of a mess is unprecedented, so there has to be something else in play here, and that "something else" is almost certainly SW screwing something up.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      > But having either one of those turn into this kind of a mess is unprecedented... It really isn't. Just earlier this year: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/business/spirit-american-airlines-cancellations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/business/spirit-american-... "Spirit Airlines and American Airlines canceled hundreds of flights on Tuesday after several days of disruptions, frustrating passengers across the country." "By midafternoon, Spirit had scrapped more than half its scheduled flights for the day, according to FlightAware, an aviation data firm. The airline canceled more than 40 percent of its flights on Monday and 19 percent on Sunday. Spirit attributed those disruptions to “a series of weather and operational challenges.”" "American had canceled about 300 flights by the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday, about a tenth of Tuesday’s scheduled trips. The airline canceled about 18 percent of its flights on Monday and 9 percent the day before. American pinned the blame on a weekend storm that hit Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, its large hub airport."
      - lisper 5y ago
        Yes, a one-day disruption is not uncommon when bad weather hits a hub, even occasionally extending into a second day. But 1) Southwest has been cancelling flights for four days, 2) Southwest specifically said that it doesn't do hub-and-spoke (they blamed the problem in part on that) and 3) the weather in Florida has not been abnormal in the past few days. The Miani area had half an inch of rain on Friday according to weather.gov. That's nothing.
- netcan 5y ago
  Perhaps, though this is probably hard given airports, take off slots and such. Sometimes the backup plan is occasional failure. Resiliency is expensive. We don't tend to own up to our decisions when we (companies, individuals, etc.) opt to pay for for limited resilience. But besides our irrational denials, it's often a rational trade off. Take the recent FB downtime for example. FB's bigness means that FB downtime had some significance but FB is not critical infrastructure. Thousands of decisions, trade offs and compromises reflect that. If there's trade off between costs or speed of software development and resilience... FB will/should not always choose resilience. That's rational. Being stranded for a day because airlines is something that happens n% of the time. Cost of the mode.
mrgalaxy 5y ago
> “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.” I routinely get flights delayed on Southwest like no other airline, even the budget ones. Now I understand why.
- jedberg 5y ago
  Well that plus they have very little slack in their schedule. They have a goal of 20 minute turnarounds. That leaves no room for error. Most airlines won't turnaround a plane in less than an hour.
  - edgefield 5y ago
    Setting all the recent issues aside, I remember a time when I would always check Southwest Airlines for flight options before any other airline and they’d often win my business. For the last ~5 years I don’t even bother. Their prices are at best the same as all the other major airlines (just as likely to be more expensive) and their flight schedules are just okay. I don’t understand how Southwest is maintaining market share (perhaps it’s not).
    - zenithd 5y ago
      It's the stroller airline. If you have kids it's a good deal.
    - esalman 5y ago
      They win (won) my business chiefly because of checked bag policy. Even with 2 free checked bags, their prices are competitive. I do hope they recover from this mess.
    - InvaderFizz 5y ago
      For me, they happen to have direct flights to my preferred airports and their cancellation policy provides a great peace of mind having the option of canceling a flight 10 minutes prior to departure and just rescheduling for later.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

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
  That's ridiculous. Yes, airlines have slots, but schedule changes, weather delays, mechanical delays, happen all the time. It's not like if you miss a slot you're just SOL. If you're flying from A to B to C to D to E to F and there's a bottleneck at B, you can deadhead the plane from A to C (or even take the pax who were going from A to C anyway) and pick up all the downstream connections. There are weather delays all the time. There are ATC problems all the time. But having either one of those turn into this kind of a mess is unprecedented, so there has to be something else in play here, and that "something else" is almost certainly SW screwing something up.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > But having either one of those turn into this kind of a mess is unprecedented... It really isn't. Just earlier this year: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/business/spirit-american-airlines-cancellations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/business/spirit-american-... "Spirit Airlines and American Airlines canceled hundreds of flights on Tuesday after several days of disruptions, frustrating passengers across the country." "By midafternoon, Spirit had scrapped more than half its scheduled flights for the day, according to FlightAware, an aviation data firm. The airline canceled more than 40 percent of its flights on Monday and 19 percent on Sunday. Spirit attributed those disruptions to “a series of weather and operational challenges.”" "American had canceled about 300 flights by the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday, about a tenth of Tuesday’s scheduled trips. The airline canceled about 18 percent of its flights on Monday and 9 percent the day before. American pinned the blame on a weekend storm that hit Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, its large hub airport."
    - lisper 5y ago
      Yes, a one-day disruption is not uncommon when bad weather hits a hub, even occasionally extending into a second day. But 1) Southwest has been cancelling flights for four days, 2) Southwest specifically said that it doesn't do hub-and-spoke (they blamed the problem in part on that) and 3) the weather in Florida has not been abnormal in the past few days. The Miani area had half an inch of rain on Friday according to weather.gov. That's nothing.
netcan 5y ago
Perhaps, though this is probably hard given airports, take off slots and such. Sometimes the backup plan is occasional failure. Resiliency is expensive. We don't tend to own up to our decisions when we (companies, individuals, etc.) opt to pay for for limited resilience. But besides our irrational denials, it's often a rational trade off. Take the recent FB downtime for example. FB's bigness means that FB downtime had some significance but FB is not critical infrastructure. Thousands of decisions, trade offs and compromises reflect that. If there's trade off between costs or speed of software development and resilience... FB will/should not always choose resilience. That's rational. Being stranded for a day because airlines is something that happens n% of the time. Cost of the mode.

mrgalaxy 5y ago

> “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.” I routinely get flights delayed on Southwest like no other airline, even the budget ones. Now I understand why.

jedberg 5y ago
Well that plus they have very little slack in their schedule. They have a goal of 20 minute turnarounds. That leaves no room for error. Most airlines won't turnaround a plane in less than an hour.
- edgefield 5y ago
  Setting all the recent issues aside, I remember a time when I would always check Southwest Airlines for flight options before any other airline and they’d often win my business. For the last ~5 years I don’t even bother. Their prices are at best the same as all the other major airlines (just as likely to be more expensive) and their flight schedules are just okay. I don’t understand how Southwest is maintaining market share (perhaps it’s not).
  - zenithd 5y ago
    It's the stroller airline. If you have kids it's a good deal.
  - esalman 5y ago
    They win (won) my business chiefly because of checked bag policy. Even with 2 free checked bags, their prices are competitive. I do hope they recover from this mess.
  - InvaderFizz 5y ago
    For me, they happen to have direct flights to my preferred airports and their cancellation policy provides a great peace of mind having the option of canceling a flight 10 minutes prior to departure and just rescheduling for later.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]