So much chatter! I would expect any interview candidate to spot the issue within a minute. For hub systems, ready crews are either at the hub, or at a spoke,

So much chatter! I would expect any interview candidate to spot the issue within a minute. For hub systems, ready crews are either at the hub, or at a spoke, ready to come back. That gives the hub a queue of ready crews, and each spoke can return a crew-plane combination to the hub when available. So with natural queue's, there's no delay cascade: it's all a function of whether and crew/plane readiness. For point-to-point systems, crew-plane's are scattered, and the next flight opportunity might not be the next flight need. There is no buffer anywhere. Furthermore, any greedy/opportunistic strategy at one point can block a superior global solution. That's the point-to-point trade-off taken by SWA. In the common case of good weather, you avoid the extra miles from going via hubs. But in the rare case of global weather shutdowns, there is no good recovery. The only real question is whether SWA had any obligation to communicate this to investors and passengers. So far, Apple stock has gone down more than SouthWest's in this period, and passengers are remaining loyal, so no damage done.