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I find it especially ironic that SWA system failed them, and this large failure was preceded by worse and worse "near failures", since SWA is in the aviation bu
by marze 4y ago
I find it especially ironic that SWA system failed them, and this large failure was preceded by worse and worse "near failures", since SWA is in the aviation business.
In the aviation arena, high reliability is maintained in part by careful analysis of "near failures": lessons are extracted and improvements are made to aircraft designs, procedures, etc.
By contrast, the "near failures" of the SWA system as a whole don't appear to have been utilized to motivate system improvements.
- masklinn 4y agoPer comments on /r/southwestairlines for 20 years the C-suite were Wall Street boys and set that as management culture, as long as shares were up things were fine. Frontlines have been emitting concerns and warnings for years but management didn’t care until an ops CEO (Bob Jordan) got in recently (as in 2022), but now there’s 20 years of ops neglect to deal with, and less than a year is nowhere near enough to start enacting real changes.
- Sakos 4y agoOn that note, I think it's interesting how glowingly people talk about Herb Kelleher. Wouldn't he be responsible for allowing that tech debt to build until it finally caused the system to fail catastrophically?
- masklinn 4y agoKeller stepped down in 2004, so not really. In 2004, replacing 10 years old systems starts becoming a consideration but it's not an active need. Kelly was CEO from 2004 to 2022. And is now chairman of the board. Bob Jordan is the new CEO, since February 2022.
- Sakos 4y agoApparently Keller was on the board until 2008 and remained an FTE until 2013. I suspect he still had plenty of influence over Southwest's direction.