Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson faced lawmakers Thursday in a highly-anticipated Senate Commerce Committee hearing to answer for the airline’s historic holiday meltdown.
“Let me be clear: we messed up,” Watterson is testified. “In hindsight, we did not have enough winter operational resilience.”
The largest domestic airline in the U.S., Southwest canceled more than 16,000 flights over an 11-day period at the end of December due to a combination of severe winter weather, staffing shortages and technology issues, the company said. Thousands were left stranded in airports across the country instead of at home for the holidays.
The company will have to explain the massive disruption at Thursday’s Senate hearing titled “Strengthening Airline Operations and Consumer Protections.”
“The American people have a lot of questions about the Southwest debacle in December that left passengers stranded or unable to be with loved ones over the holidays,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Wednesday. “We’re going to ask for answers to those questions. I’m interested in hearing the pilot’s testimony that this debacle could have been avoided if Southwest had made investments sooner.”
In addition to Watterson, Southwest Airlines Pilots Association President Captain Casey Murray, Sharon Pinkerton, a senior official with Airlines for America, and Paul Hudson of Flyers’ Rights, a passenger advocacy organization, are also slated to testify.
Travelers at Baltimore Washington International airport deal with the impact of Southwest Airlines canceling more than 12,000 flights around the Christmas holiday weekend across the country and in Baltimore, Maryland, Dec. 27, 2022.
Michael Mccoy/Reuters
Ahead of the hearing, ABC News obtained messages sent to Southwest Airlines’ cockpits during this winter’s meltdown which illustrate the dysfunction taking place at the company.
“Scheduling is asking to confirm who is operating this flight. Please send Employee ID numbers to confirm. It’s a mess down here,” one message said.
Southwest had no idea where their crews were, who was flying their planes and was unable to contact pilots and flight attendants for days.
The airline flew more than 500 empty flights, many on routes that had been cancelled and could have been full of passengers while more than two million people were stranded.
“No updates here. Scheduling is so far behind we were told we aren’t allowed to walk over and talk to them,” another note from a flight dispatcher to a cockpit read.
Last month, in an exclusive interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan apologized for the debacle.
“There’s just no way almost to apologize enough because we love our customers, we love our people and really impacted their plans,” Jordan said. “There will be a lot of lessons learned that come out of this.”
The chaos cost the company as much as $825 million in lost revenue and added expenses, the company said in a government filing last month.
(This news/post has been generated from abcnews.go.com and its was posted in their Politics category. CT is not responsible for the above information.)
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