Or maybe he snuck up to a real one and hung the flag himself /s
(edit: the "controversial tweet")
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1447679841717919744?...
Wait a minute...
Yeah complex systems running on a razor's edge NEVER fail! NOAA and all the other weather forecast/data providers are all in on the conspiracy! /s
But seriously, I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration of my original comment. Thanks.
And not just the FAA. That's real-time data that thousands or perhaps millions of people download and keep local copies of for at least sliding windows of time. So every single private company and individual who downloaded and stored that data in the hours leading up to the disruption would have to also go back and modify their local copies. Thousands, maybe millions, of people.
To believe weather and airspace closures didn't play a major role you have to believe that those closures didn't happen or that Southwest is not truthful about where its planes were. But either of those means either completely disregarding objective evidence or believing in a MASSIVE conspiracy to modify that data. A conspiracy involving literally millions of people. Almost all of whom have literally no incentive to lie and would have had to take an active role in deleting historical data and replacing it with fabricated data. Just... what?!
Also, this observation cuts both ways: why only and exactly southwest's pilots and for only one day?
So... so what? The explanation from Southwest's CEO makes sense and matches up against a ton of publicly available data.
On the other hand there's evidence of at least one pissed off pilot (who, none-the-less, showed up to work?)
But, again, all that other data still exists.
So. Either there's a vast conspiracy that involves NOAA, the FAA, airport admin, air traffic controllers, Southwest, the pilot's union, etc. Or else one dude flew a flag and also there was a massive scheduling failure and the two are unrelated.
I genuinely couldn't have asked for a better exemplar of my original post: seeing a ton of verifiable data vs. a single anecdote and choosing to implicitly believe in a vast conspiracy because the anecdote touches one's feels the right way.