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How could a CEO let this persist for more than an hour? Is there nobody with the leaderships skills to just give everyone free flights and promise everything wi

How could a CEO let this persist for more than an hour? Is there nobody with the leaderships skills to just give everyone free flights and promise everything will be sorted while having people record who worked and who flew and what services were used as best they can? The software failed, just Jerry-rig something up to get people where they need to be, let the accountants and programmers clear up the mess after the fact. [Edit]Software helps optimize things, but as long as the crews and suppliers have sufficient faith that they will be treated fairly, you could run this all with paper and pen for a few days while the software gets straightened out. Decide which hubs are most important, and have someone work out what goes where by hand. Once those routes are up and running, you can work outward to the less trafficked airports. Just work on getting the most people to the places that help the most. Crews know how many hours they've worked, and can track that themselves for the moment, or perhaps the Captain could do that. Everyone has cell phones, and could route around this damage. The consensus here on HN seems to be to give in without trying, which I find disturbing.

deleted 4y ago
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_yb2s 4y ago
Would that really work? How do you make sure too many people don’t show up to get on the same plane? How do you make sure every flight has a crew? How do you decide which flights to still run when only half the incoming planes actually showed up?
burkaman 4y ago
You can't give people free flights if you don't know where your planes and crews are and don't know where to tell your angry customers to go. There are also laws to adhere to, there is a maximum amount of time a flight crew can work so if you tell them to "just fly if you can and we'll figure it out later" you're probably going to break a lot of laws and endanger a lot of passengers. I think they probably are trying to jerry-rig a system, but the airline industry is heavily regulated for safety reasons (a good idea that has been extremely successful), so it's very difficult to get a plane in the air if you don't know what the fuck you're doing.
rjh29 4y ago
It's so simple, why didn't this entire company full of experienced specialists just do the random idea I just came up with without thinking about it at all?
- lpapez 4y ago
  Somebody once said "the H in HN stands for hubris" and I often find it painfully accurate.
- ctoth 4y ago
  It's almost as simple as crapping on an idea without saying why the idea is a bad one, which I personally find to be a much worse failure and an indicator of someone who likes to tear down without making suggestions.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rjh29 4y ago
    I don't have enough information to make suggestions. Sometimes it's okay to not have an opinion on something, especially when you have no relationship with the company and have no idea what the reality of the situation is.
Terretta 4y ago
> have someone work out ... by hand How many minutes for that someone to work out where a plane is, how to crew it legally, and where it should go? How many planes crews and flights are backlogged?
- mikewarot 4y ago
  According to Wikipedia, Southwest has 779 planes in service.[1] Also, there are 11 hubs if I count correctly[2], so an average of 71 planes/hub. Surely a team of a people could manage that amount of information in each hub on a temporary basis. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines
- FateOfNations 4y ago
  > how to crew it legally the rules for this are insanely complicated and practically require automation to keep track of if you have more than a small handful of crew members. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-G/part-117 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-G...
sokoloff 4y ago
If your FAA-approved operations specifications (ops specs) say that "all revenue flights will be approved for dispatch via process X", you better make sure that all flights are approved by that process, not by Enterprising Ernie on a whiteboard somewhere.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

_yb2s 4y ago

Would that really work? How do you make sure too many people don’t show up to get on the same plane? How do you make sure every flight has a crew? How do you decide which flights to still run when only half the incoming planes actually showed up?

burkaman 4y ago

You can't give people free flights if you don't know where your planes and crews are and don't know where to tell your angry customers to go. There are also laws to adhere to, there is a maximum amount of time a flight crew can work so if you tell them to "just fly if you can and we'll figure it out later" you're probably going to break a lot of laws and endanger a lot of passengers. I think they probably are trying to jerry-rig a system, but the airline industry is heavily regulated for safety reasons (a good idea that has been extremely successful), so it's very difficult to get a plane in the air if you don't know what the fuck you're doing.

rjh29 4y ago

It's so simple, why didn't this entire company full of experienced specialists just do the random idea I just came up with without thinking about it at all?

lpapez 4y ago
Somebody once said "the H in HN stands for hubris" and I often find it painfully accurate.
ctoth 4y ago
It's almost as simple as crapping on an idea without saying why the idea is a bad one, which I personally find to be a much worse failure and an indicator of someone who likes to tear down without making suggestions.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rjh29 4y ago
  I don't have enough information to make suggestions. Sometimes it's okay to not have an opinion on something, especially when you have no relationship with the company and have no idea what the reality of the situation is.

Terretta 4y ago

> have someone work out ... by hand How many minutes for that someone to work out where a plane is, how to crew it legally, and where it should go? How many planes crews and flights are backlogged?

mikewarot 4y ago
According to Wikipedia, Southwest has 779 planes in service.[1] Also, there are 11 hubs if I count correctly[2], so an average of 71 planes/hub. Surely a team of a people could manage that amount of information in each hub on a temporary basis. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines
FateOfNations 4y ago
> how to crew it legally the rules for this are insanely complicated and practically require automation to keep track of if you have more than a small handful of crew members. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-G/part-117 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-G...

sokoloff 4y ago

If your FAA-approved operations specifications (ops specs) say that "all revenue flights will be approved for dispatch via process X", you better make sure that all flights are approved by that process, not by Enterprising Ernie on a whiteboard somewhere.