Southwest new CEO denies walk-off rumors, defends pilots amid schedule meltdown

It’s not about being right. It’s about being right for the right reasons.

If you make a million predictions one of them is bound be true. Just because you’re the first to predict one thing doesn’t mean that everything you say is true, or that you shouldn’t be criticized for jumping to conclusions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-...

You are structuring your argument as if it was a one off and not a culminating crescendo for some people. News have been getting progressively worse over the past few decades. This just happened to be a very clear and visible sign, because it is just hard to find something so visibly wrong.

It's the cherry on top.

Between cherrypicked statistics, obvious and tremendous political bias (Both sides, but we all know which one benefits more), a complete abandonment of balanced coverage, and tinting the faces of politicians to make them appear less healthy (happened to Trump and Bernie), I'm just about done ever trusting any mainstream media source again.

When Ben Shapiro's news website does a better job of admitting their own biases than any of the three-letter networks, we have a problem.

The journalist is literally standing in front of a burning building: https://youtu.be/igzNAzcXNBA

It’s totally fair to lose faith after seeing that.

Sure a head count of all protests from the whole country buries the problem from view. Using this logic Jan 6th was peaceful.

The problem is they mentioned protests, not protestors. The more relevant way to look at it is how many protest events led to rioting as it progressed?

I'd be more interested in data a few years from now to show if protesting really did anything? Obviously this is a right we must protect and embolden, however for certain causes protesting in this day and age seems to do little to elicit actual political action or change - sometimes it even does the opposite.

That is fair and logical take. But if the protesters had been wearing red caps, people would be defending a fair and logical take in the press that they were cover for violent riots and looting.

Refunds. If flights are cancelled for pretty much any reason aside from weather the company is on the hook for hotel rooms and refunds.

Here is a list of Biden's lies over the last 10 months. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.courier-journal.com/amp/591...

Which shows you everyone is lying to you no matter what side you are on. Better than the other guy means you are still being fooled. Rep and Dem are two sides of the same coin. It reminds me of a Simpsons halloween episode where the Rep and Dem candidates are replaced with two Aliens and when the truth is uncovered voters were stuck with a choice between an alien Rep or an alien Dem who would enslave all humans or voting for a human third party candidate. The ending scene shows humanity enslaved with Homer saying he voted for the other alien.

More importantly, in this political environment, people are voting against candidates, not for them.

Any view of Republican voters as a personality cult misses that conservatives have spent decades in hold-your-nose-and-vote mode.

How can any serious person compare the level of honesty between the two?

If we’re being honest, citizens want them to lie to some extent. The want a visionary president to say they’ll fix all the world problems in a way that is acceptable to their voters. The voters completely ignore than no one person can do much of anything. They will be at the mercy of the government process and the people within. All with competing objectives. But, when asked during a debate, what will you do during your first 100 days in office, you can say “it depends” which would be the honest answer.

That said, lying and weaponizing misinformation are two completely different things. Bill Clinton lied about cheating on his wife. Trump lied every single thing. This is the guy that drew over the Hurricane map because he knew better where the hurricane was heading. When you apply that alternate reality to things like questioning the election results and whatnot it’s quite a different level of dishonesty.

'dissent' is an antonym of assent. I think you mean 'ascent', like you do on stairs.

That Kamala was involved with him is remarkable only in that usually Willie was seen with a tall, leggy blonde, so she wasn't his type.

Most of his mistresses he would find government jobs for -- when he was speaker of the house, Willie had over 1000 full time "aides", but they weren't primarily mistresses, most were pure political patronage positions, to keep the power base growing. Brown was in absolute control of the Assembly,

"In many ways, the Speaker of the Assembly, in pure politics, may have more power than the Governor. . . . Willie has an awful lot of power, and none of the headaches of being governor. Ed Meese Chief of Staff to Governor Ronald Reagan, 1967–1975"

To understand how he ran things, just imagine a pyramid of patronage with Brown on top:

The party cost $250,000 to stage, but not a cent came out of Brown's pocket. Brown raised the money from corporations, trade groups, and others with business in the Legislature. The food and booze also came free of charge: California wineries delivered a truckload crammed with one hundred cases of wine. San Francisco's best eateries, the finest on earth, provided delicacies to match. "I am hell-bent on enjoying every minute of my life," Brown proclaimed in an interview with GQ magazine. "So I do not mistreat myself. I make very few sacrifices. I live my dreams."

Not everyone was impressed with Brown's stupendous excess. David Roberti peevishly stayed away, giving his ticket to a Burbank city council-woman. The prickly Senate leader was in a snit over Brown listing himself on the invitation as "Speaker of the Legislature." Roberti fulminated that the Legislature had two houses and Brown was Speaker of only one. "You should bill yourself accordingly," Roberti huffed in a letter to the Speaker.

Roberti was technically correct; Brown was the leader of only one house of one branch of state government. But nobody that night cared about Roberti's civics lesson, much less his pride. In the world of politics, there really was only one Speaker of the Legislature, and that was Willie Brown.

He was the most powerful politician in the Capitol, and arguably in the entire state. Willie Brown was more than that; he was the P.T. Barnum of California politics, the best show in a state that relentlessly produced bland, blow-dried political leaders.

Brown's flamboyance, however, hid another reality. The bashes were one more method for Brown to spin his web of power, tying other politicians, interests groups, campaign donors, and power brokers to himself. Lobbyists, corporate executives, and union officials paid for everything so that they could don a tuxedo or a formal gown and rub elbows with Brown and his friends.

Brown was allegedly "treating" them to his party, and everyone played along with the facade. The end result was the same. Those who wrote checks expected, and got, the attention of the Speaker and a place at the negotiating table when the party was over. Brown got their money and used it to fuel an election machine that kept his friends and allies elected to the Assembly. His friends, in turn, kept him elected Speaker.

The whole edifice was based on a simple principle: keeping Assembly members happy. As long as Brown could keep forty-one members happy, he could remain Speaker. As long as he was Speaker, the checks kept coming, and Assembly members remained happy.

"Don't ever misread me—ever," Brown once said in the middle of a challenge to his leadership. "I always have forty-one votes. Always." Few understood or appreciated how accurate he was.

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft0m3n...

After he was term limited out -- and that proposition was basically written against him (which is why it also reduced the number of "aides") -- he became mayor of San Francisco and got a reduced allotment of about 100 mayor appointed positions and that's where Kamala came into the picture, no doubt working it to get a position in the DAs office. But in fairness to her, it would be hard to get any valuable position in SF unless Willie signed off.

Look at any notable CA politician and they are one or at most two steps away from Willie and his machine. They all owe Willie something.

When it comes to playing politics, Brown’s protégés learned from the best. In Sacramento, opponents complained he routinely flouted conflict-of-interest laws, representing clients who had business in the capital, but FBI investigations went nowhere, earning him the nickname “Slick Willie,” a moniker Brown wore proudly. He also called himself the “ayatollah of Sacramento” — vote with him, and you were rewarded with perks. Cross him, and you were banished to a basement office. Brown’s escapades were so infamous that, after meeting Brown in 1992, future president Bill Clinton quipped, “Now I’ve met the real Slick Willie.” https://www.marinatimes.com/dpw-boss-mohammed-nuru-finally-s...

For a long time, almost nothing happened in California that he didn't have his hands in, and a good chunk of what did happen was used to either line his pocket or cement his power, and sometimes both. Brown would find a way to do both with remarkable ease.

The position of SF mayor was almost retirement for him, and it came at just the right time, when the city was booming with dot-com money, going on a building spree, and Willie set up a special power group consisting of the city's biggest tech companies that he would meet with -- something like the old Phoenix Forty, in order to keep the gravy train going. My guess is that a big reason why SF became popular with techies is because of Willie wrangled them to increase office space there. In the beginning, all the tech was in sunnyvale/MV, and didn't really go up to SF. SF was where the techies would drive to in order to party on weekends, but the office was a big campus in Santa Clara county. Willie played a big role in changing that, as well in remodelling the cap on city hall, emblazoning it with gold (probably brass, but the symbolism was clear - gold rush!).

Here is a pic of Brown and his Fundraiser (who became baby-mama in 1999):

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/LOVE-AND-MONEY-Mayor...

But his current gf is Sonya Molodetskaya, however at this point I'm not sure she does more than keep him warm at night, like King David in his twilight years. Sonya became a fasion icon in SF and I think became an editor of some magazine, but not sure.

https://heavy.com/news/2019/01/sonya-molodetskaya-willie-bro...

In dot-com 2.0, sniffing opportunity again, he also ended up on the boards or as a paid consultant for some of the ride-sharing outfits.

I remember seeing Willie a few times when he was mayor. He would spend a lot of time attending high class parties or driving down market street or some other notable street like Haight in his limo, with the Brioni suits, a cigar, and the current blonde. Music blasting, sometimes talking to people out of his limo. Also known for the hats. It was like a cartoon.

But the guy has a joie-de-vivre and fantastic political instincts. He knows the system better than anyone else, and played it like a fiddle. And the machine he set up is still going -- if you want to build something or bid on something, you better pass a white envelope to someone who owes Willie. That machine will keep going long after he's dead. Last I checked, he had his own column in the Chronicle, "Willie’s World", doing political commentary.

The FBI has tried multiple times to hit the machine. Once during the "shrimp boy" scandal, they got a wiretap and recorded some of the conversations by the officials:

"You got to pay to play here. We got it. We know this. We are the best at this game … better than New York" https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/in-shrimp-boy-drama-connecti...

But nothing ever happened except a few low-level officials. And after the election of 2020, no more indictments have been handed out. Willie Brown wins again.

https://www.marinatimes.com/the-city-family-is-a-machiavelli...

https://www.marinatimes.com/cronyism-is-still-alive-and-well...

Presumably there are people in the world with a finer-grained view of things than "blue" and "red", such as centrists, people sympathetic to progressive social views but not a fan of progressive economic views, people hurt by Prop 13 in particular, etc.

(It is certainly possible that such people are working to improve their home state and the only people actually moving have a dualistic view of politics, though.)

Other airlines were disrupted, but not to the same level, due to different level of dependance on said stop. The second most affected airline IIRC had Jacksonville as minor stop, and out of all impacted, only Southwest used what they call "line flow" flight planning. Which results in Southwest being the only one to end up with stuck planes that were supposed to service a many routes way further away.

Most low-cost airlines operate on a sort of "distributed hub-and-spoke" (many small hubs instead of one/few big ones), with plane going bidirectionally on a route to non-hub airport before any route switching happens. This means that so long as the "hub" isn't severely impacted your disruption is somewhat contained and you still have access to a fleet of planes&crews that can be reassigned. A pattern like this:

  H->A->H->B->H->C->H ;; H = "Hub"; A,B,C - spoke airports

Disruption at A,B, or C doesn't block unrelated flights, only disruption at H.

Southwest instead flies like this

  A->B->C->D->E->F->G

If B is in any way blocked, flights B->C, C->D, D->E, E->F, and F->G are all going to be disrupted, possibly without replacements plane/crew combinations available. If the disrupted airport has a lot of overlapping "lines" like that, the disruption quickly turns catastrophical.

Also, appears that at least some approaches were manually vectored recently at KJAX, which isn't fun if there's a shortage of controllers.

It doesn't matter. What mattered is it sparked my curiosity in knowing more, above and below my immediate reply as well as the rest of the comments in this post, however true or false they are. Everyone goes somewhere and I (try to) go where they've been with some DYOR.

Some things I never knew until recently:

- PTO isn't federally and legally required yet most companies do it

- Some states have some influence on PTO policy

- Southwest Airlines is a Texas-headquartered company

- Because of claims that MSM are either incompetent or narrative-driven, secondary and tertiary conjectures leading to this headline should be considered as well

- Lastly, a visit to Wikipedia yielded this line:

> If PTO hours go unused, employees may sometimes call in sick near the end of the year so they can obtain the benefit of paid leave before it disappears. Employers may counter this tendency by paying employees for some or all of their unused days at year-end or upon retirement or resignation.[1]

Unused PTO must be paid out in many states and in states where it is not legally required it is generally still required if the business has historically done it. Beyond that, Southwest pilots are unionized. No sizable union would allow separation without PTO payout.

Covzire was claiming without any proof whatsoever that they saw "lots of reports on twitter."

They're saying they took sick days instead of vacations.

That's entirely about sick leave.

I uses to do that, but now I realize I'm willing to pay for legroom. I still look for low cost, but only after factoring in the legroom.

And yet first class tickets often do cost 10x as much, and you get little more than a hot towel and some liquor to shut you up.

Ryanairs average flight price is $60 and this company is very profitable.

Warren Buffet has long since described the aviation industry as over competitive. This was decades ago, before the low cost airlines even entered the picture.

Airlines are a great example of competition driving prices down for consumers.

> Once the boarding door closes, there is no way to ever gain money on that flight.

What about in-flight food and alcohol? In-flight wifi/movies/media? Does Sky Mall pay a commission? I'd be curious how much all of those things add in revenue after the door closes.

This is a little bit misleading. You have to look at the entire history of the industry. A lot of consolidation has happened to eliminate competition. And pretty much every legacy airline has declared bankruptcy except for coincidentally, Southwest. Largely due to their founders strategy of avoiding overly leveraging the company. So much so that at one point during the pandemic when other airlines were overleveraged, their stock price did not crash and they were the most valuable airline in the country by a considerable amount.

Delta is the airline that abandoned me for 40 hours in ATL of all places, while Southwest has never let me down. If you had asked me a week ago which of the two was more reliable, I would have told you Southwest and I would have meant it absolutely.

How would you have me judge them? I don't know anything about how to run an airline and I wouldn't even know where to start if you asked me to look up which of the two had a more resilient business model. You can't really expect any random air traveler to have an opinion on airlines better informed than their personal experiences. I think most people would struggle to tell you something so basic as what sort of plane they were even sitting in.

Amusing how the point is missed again. I wouldn't blame consumers for consolidation on the supplier side through unethical practices.

Or perhaps unrestrained capitalism will always result in these conditions?

It's not just the rate of exceptional events, but what happens when the exceptional event occurs.

1. Miss your flight? They will try to book you on another. That's why load factor is important -- to find that extra seat. Low cost airlines have higher load factors (more efficient) so they are less able to accomodate you.

2. Bigger problem? There are reciprocity agreements to fly with a different airline. Low cost airlines don't have the same coverage, so again less able to accomodate you.

It's just a general principle of efficiency versus robustness. With the low cost airline you are choosing the more efficient/less robust option. So when something goes wrong, it will be more painful.

That extra pain is more important than differences in the rate that things go wrong.

Other perks, like more value to frequent flyer miles, availability of first class, being able to pick your seat, etc, also play a role.

An economy ticket generally consists of two or more flights and is generally round trip, so that 1.5% could add up to a significant chance of being late. Add the chance of "mere" lateness to one airport resulting in missing another flight and you a significant chance of being delayed each trip.

Most cancelled flights are about weather, all money can buy is pilots more will to take risks. . As they say, 'there are old pilots and there are bold pilots; but there are no old and bold pilots'. So I'm happy with cheaper pilots and cancelled flights.

Thankfully, language mistakes are less painful to endure.

I am learning a lot today, so I feel I should thank you.

The link you provided lists Allegiant Air as one of the other airlines that flies to/from FL ( and uses the same system ), but there is no report same issues as SW has/had.

For the record, I don't really care one way or another, but I am not that big on taking executives word at face value; even outgoing ones.

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.

Diversions mid-flight are pretty rare, usually they will choose to skip B before taking off. That said there are some interesting instances where airlines can "tanker" fuel by fueling up more than they need to in a city where prices are cheaper

Recently?

https://www.sec.gov/enforce/selected-division-enforcement-ac...

Facebook, Tesla, Nissan, GE, Wells Fargo, Rio Tinto...

They legally aren't allowed to do it, officially or unofficially. So the union cannot "take credit" for it.

If they can get hit really hard for it, it's better to play along and not admit anything.

Because the executives at Southwest can't just make that accusation without enormous evidence that it's true. It's legally dangerous ground for a lot of reasons, because the pilots are federally prohibited from pulling sick-outs.

Falsely accusing someone of breaking a federal law, a law that is very important to their job and industry, can come back on you in an epic way given the stakes here. That would be an opening for a giant lawsuit and that's the best case scenario for Southwest if they did something that stupid.

> saying that other people are breaking the law is not a crime.

You do not want that claim to be false - you do not want to be wrong and or unable to prove your out-on-a-ledge position - if you go around making very substantial accusations like that (eg stating the pilots are pulling a sick-out), which can directly threaten the livelihoods/careers of the pilots. If you're wrong or otherwise can't back up your claims, you just made a mistake that will cost shareholders an expensive legal settlement and possibly get you fired.

Not weird. Southwest famously doesn't do hub-and-spoke routing, so they're much less resilient to events like this; cancelled flights in one region cause cascading failures on other legs of the routes they're on.

Childish, hyperbolic statements from a hardline ideologue. Like virtually everything the, er, "non free press"(?) clutches pearls over, this is going nowhere.

You aren't in on something. You haven't seen beyond the veil. You're the mark.

So if we can’t trust the union or the company where is everyone getting info that there was a sick out?

>You are putting a lot of stock into a PR piece...

No, I believe that absent contrary evidence, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely. I've seen virtually every other US carrier experience a cascading failure due to weather or computer failures at least once over the past 10 years. I've also seen how quickly certain politicians, who stand to benefit personally from casting doubt on vaccine mandates, have jumped on this event.

Yes, SWA has 11 hubs, even though they refuse to call them that. There's even a list on the wikipedia[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines

> The FAA even released a statement contradicting SWA's official excuse.

Where? They're on record supporting the weather and staffing explanations.

https://twitter.com/FAANews/status/1447249660884754441

"Flight delays & cancellations occurred for a few hours Friday PM due to widespread severe weather, military training, & limited staffing in one area of the Jacksonville en route center."

https://twitter.com/FAANews/status/1447708023724679175

"To be clear: None of the information from Southwest, its pilots union, or the FAA indicates that this weekend’s cancellations were related to vaccine mandates."

They just don't want to be blamed for the cascading failure that took days to resolve.

https://www.mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2021/10/11/southwes...

"No FAA air traffic staffing shortages have been reported since Friday."

> Perhaps this LAX -> SJC flight happens to pass through Florida too?

The route, no. The aircraft, very possibly. An aircraft that flew from MIA to LAX last night might be the one intended to fly the LAX to SJC flight today. The flight crew aren't glued to the plane.

I mean... which specific LAX -> SJC flight did you have in mind?

Flight 3027[1] does LAX -> SJC, but first it does TPA (Tampa) -> STL (St Louis), and STL -> LAX.

There may be some back and forth flights, but if that plane goes back to LAX right away, it's probably flight 2497 [2], which goes to BWI (Baltimore) after LAX.

If that plane can't leave Florida in the morning, there goes your noon flight to SJC, and your early afternoon flight to LAX. Plus, the plane may not have made it to Baltimore and the schedule is messed up the next day too.

[1] https://www.southwest.com/air/flight-status/path.html?depart...

[2] https://www.southwest.com/air/flight-status/path.html?depart...

You really have no idea how airline scheduling works. A typical trip pairing for a cockpit crew is for 4 or 5 days going all over the country. Start in Atlanta, fly to Miami, back to Atlanta, then to Vegas, sleep there, next morning back to Atlanta, then on to Phoenix, and back to Atlanta again, on to Houston and sleep there. Etc etc for 4 days in a row. So a problem in Miami could easily cause delays and cancellations on a flight that to you looks totally unrelated.

The only reason you have less impact in a traditional hub and spoke system is that there are extra aircraft and reserve crews in the hubs (some are at the airport, some at home at a few hours notice) and every other flight passes through the hub. So if the Atlanta to Miami and back thing goes really wrong, another crew and aircraft will fly the Atlanta to Vegas flight and sometimes the rest of the trip.

Doesn't happen for a simple delay, but if the delay pushes the crew over their duty time limits on the outbound flight for example the return to hub would be cancelled and a reserve crew would pick up the next flights starting from the hub. The timed-out crew would go to be hotel and fly back as a passenger with the next days flight.

There are more than one, which provides an opportunity to always say someone is wrong in what one or the other means. Thanks for that.

One, I think your timeline is wrong (Rogan got it early Sept. [1] but even the FDA was making "you're not a horse" jokes in late August [2]), and two, just because Rogan took it and got better doesn't mean it's what cured him (I believe he took multiple medications/treatments and most people his age recover from COVID regardless)

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/media/joe-rogan-covid/index.h... [2] https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1429050070243192839

> if everyone gets a shot then the restrictions can go away.

That's really hard to believe after "15 days to slow the spread" turned into unprecedented vaccine mandates. And yes, they are unprecedented because needing a vaccine to work basically anywhere is unprecedented, especially for vaccines that are less tested than those that usually get mandated.

In other words, we have been lied to enough about when restrictions would end that I don't think they will end.

Go ask Israel. They are on their third required booster shot. Are you so naive that you think the government will give up this power after it has successfully forced the masses to inject a vaccine with no long terms studies?