southwest airlines

Southwest Airlines Co. LUV 1.06% said it has identified several solutions to manage the kind of severe winter-weather disruptions that caught it off guard late last year, resulting in thousands of flight cancellations.  Chief Executive Bob Jordan said the company understood what caused the holiday disruption. “We expect to mitigate the risk of an event of this magnitude ever happening again,” he said…

ATLANTA—Passengers boarding Southwest Airlines Flight 2299 to Washington last week didn’t see the typical ads for credit cards or dreamy vacation spots on the walls of the jet bridge.In their place were framed travel tips, including a heads up on Southwest’s quirky seating policy. “No assigned seats on board, pick any open seat!’’ one poster says. Disco music blared from portable speakers to keep people moving. The jet bridge change-ups and other experiments at four Southwest…

Southwest Airlines Co. LUV -1.28% and FedEx Corp. FDX 0.08% planes came within a thousand feet of each other Saturday morning near a runway at the Austin, Texas, airport, a close call that air-safety officials are investigating. Around 6:40 a.m. CT, a FedEx Boeing Co. BA -1.59% 767 cargo plane was cleared to land on one of the…

Southwest Airlines Co. LUV -1.28% is reducing the number of hours prospective pilots must have spent flying jets and other turbine-powered aircraft, as the carrier looks to increase hiring. Southwest had required applicants to have spent at least 1,000 hours flying such aircraft. It will now consider pilots with less of that type of experience, and said it would list 500 hours of “turbine time” as a preferred qualification. The change…

The largest carrier of U.S. domestic passengers said Thursday that it expects another loss in the first quarter as customer cancellations rose at the start of the year and bookings decelerated. Southwest scrubbed more than 16,700 flights from Dec. 21 through Dec. 31 as the impact of winter storms cascaded through its network. It was one of the most disruptive and expensive airline meltdowns the industry has experienced in recent years, attracting criticism from regulators and lawmakers. U.S. airlines have said…

The U.S. Transportation Department is probing Southwest Airlines Co. LUV 0.52% ’s scheduling in the wake of its holiday meltdown last month, examining whether executives sold more flights than the airline could realistically operate. The DOT said it is in the initial phase of a comprehensive investigation into the late December debacle. As part of the investigation, the department said it is looking into whether Southwest engaged in an…

Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)It’s been a rough few weeks for the U.S. air industry and tech. First, Southwest Airlines was forced to cancel an astounding 16,700 holiday flights due, in part, to outdated scheduling software. Just weeks later the Federal Aviation Administration drastically had to ground all domestic flights because of a corrupted database file in a crucial safety system. Now, a regional airliner has reportedly inadvertently spilled the beans on the U.S.’ no-fly, terrorist watch list. And it’s a…

Chaos. Bedlam. A nightmare. Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Ed Bastian, speaking on his airline’s earnings call last week, described 2022 as “the most difficult operational year in our history.” This from the airline that gave travelers the fewest fits in 2022. Delta ranked first among nine U.S. carriers in The Wall Street Journal’s 15th annual airline scorecard for the second consecutive year and fifth of the past six. Alaska Airlines, a unit…

Southwest Airlines Co. LUV -2.55% pilots plan to vote later this year on whether to authorize union leaders to call for a strike should they deem it necessary, as they become increasingly frustrated with what they say are stalled contract negotiations.  Capt. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association union, told members Wednesday that the union plans to hold the vote starting May 1, citing what he said was a…

An air traffic controller works inside an airport tower simulator on July 14, 2011 at the Denver International Airport in Denver, ColoradoPhoto: John Moore (Getty Images)It turns out a corrupted database file may be all it takes to briefly bring the entire air industry to a standstill.In a statement released late Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was still investigating the root cause of a systems error that forced it to dramatically ground all domestic flights for more than a hour Wednesday, but said…