Southwest Airlines to Revamp Crew Scheduling System

Southwest has engaged Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm, to help it understand what went wrong and to examine whether it needs to reset priorities, Mr. Jordan said. Southwest’s board has also formed its own operations review committee to look at the disruption.

“What I want to understand are the root causes of how we got there,” Mr. Jordan said. “Should we manage things in a different way? Are we able to make decisions quickly enough?”

The airline is working with

General Electric Co.

GE 1.51%

on a fresh version of a crew scheduling system it uses to help it reassign pilots and flight attendants after a disruption like a storm, with new capabilities that the airline hopes would help it if it encounters a similar situation. That system, which Southwest refers to as SkySolver, was updated several times over the past year, Mr. Jordan said.

However, it wasn’t designed to address the situation Southwest encountered during the severe winter storm, he said.

The widespread severe cold, wind and ice resulted in huge numbers of flight cancellations, triggering waves of crew reassignments that cascaded throughout the airlines’ network. The software was faced with an onslaught of new problems to solve before it had finished working through the last batch, Mr. Jordan said. As a result, the airline had to revert to tedious manual processes that it has said made it harder to catch up and get back on track.

“We’re moving quickly through a new version with GE that would allow us to not fall into that situation again—the software could solve those past problems and clean them up,” Mr. Jordan said.

A GE spokesman said the tool Southwest uses “performed as designed throughout the event” and said it is working with the airline to “define new functionality as they improve their crew-rescheduling capability.”

The upgrade is among a series of steps Southwest is taking to prevent a repeat of that incident, which has sparked sharp criticism from lawmakers and regulators in addition to outrage from customers. The airline has realized it doesn’t have enough engine covers in some locations. In Denver, some aircraft that were left outside overnight in the extreme cold froze and were rendered unusable well into the following day. The airline is also looking at its deicing equipment and procedures.

“There are obvious things that we learned during the event that we can go do now,” Mr. Jordan said.

Southwest is about 90% finished processing refunds of flights, and nearly all of the bags that were separated from customers during the disruption have been returned, he said. The airline also made awards of 25,000 frequent flier points to nearly two million people, he said.

Write to Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com

Southwest has engaged Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm, to help it understand what went wrong and to examine whether it needs to reset priorities, Mr. Jordan said. Southwest’s board has also formed its own operations review committee to look at the disruption.

“What I want to understand are the root causes of how we got there,” Mr. Jordan said. “Should we manage things in a different way? Are we able to make decisions quickly enough?”

The airline is working with

General Electric Co.

GE 1.51%

on a fresh version of a crew scheduling system it uses to help it reassign pilots and flight attendants after a disruption like a storm, with new capabilities that the airline hopes would help it if it encounters a similar situation. That system, which Southwest refers to as SkySolver, was updated several times over the past year, Mr. Jordan said.

However, it wasn’t designed to address the situation Southwest encountered during the severe winter storm, he said.

The widespread severe cold, wind and ice resulted in huge numbers of flight cancellations, triggering waves of crew reassignments that cascaded throughout the airlines’ network. The software was faced with an onslaught of new problems to solve before it had finished working through the last batch, Mr. Jordan said. As a result, the airline had to revert to tedious manual processes that it has said made it harder to catch up and get back on track.

“We’re moving quickly through a new version with GE that would allow us to not fall into that situation again—the software could solve those past problems and clean them up,” Mr. Jordan said.

A GE spokesman said the tool Southwest uses “performed as designed throughout the event” and said it is working with the airline to “define new functionality as they improve their crew-rescheduling capability.”

The upgrade is among a series of steps Southwest is taking to prevent a repeat of that incident, which has sparked sharp criticism from lawmakers and regulators in addition to outrage from customers. The airline has realized it doesn’t have enough engine covers in some locations. In Denver, some aircraft that were left outside overnight in the extreme cold froze and were rendered unusable well into the following day. The airline is also looking at its deicing equipment and procedures.

“There are obvious things that we learned during the event that we can go do now,” Mr. Jordan said.

Southwest is about 90% finished processing refunds of flights, and nearly all of the bags that were separated from customers during the disruption have been returned, he said. The airline also made awards of 25,000 frequent flier points to nearly two million people, he said.

Write to Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com