News: Southwest mechanical issues cause cancellations and delays

[joelkfla]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/19/business/southwest-flight-cancellations/index.html

Quote from CNN:

On Tuesday, more than 40 planes had maintenance issues -- more than twice the average number on a typical day. That created a domino effect, disrupting Southwest flights across the country.
According to FlightAware, Southwest Airlines canceled 186 flights on Tuesday -- about 4% of its operations. Another 730 flights were delayed.​

 

[hsmamato2]

I'm hoping if my flight next week was to be affected I would have been notified....(???)

 

[cruisin5]

Ya, saw this, getting a little nervous for our March flights. Especially the part about the culture of discouraging maintenance from fixing issues. Maybe I should have picked Allegiant.

 

[cruisin5]

Here's a link to current cancellations.

https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/

 

[AngiTN]

There was some talk about this being something the mechanics are doing intentionally by not reporting to work at an adequate level to do necessary repairs (like a flu-out type of thing) though I wasn't clear or sure as to why.
My brother was a SW mechanic shop foreman at one time and loved working for them. He's with AA now so the culture at SW could have changed in the time since he's been there. But he loved the concept they had with 1 aircraft and found it very easy to run their shop

 

[mom2rtk]

Isn't the airline in contract negotiations with the union?

 

[joelkfla]

Isn't the airline in contract negotiations with the union?

Yes, it's not in the article, but on TV they said they have been negotiating for several years.

 

[NotUrsula]

This is a planned maintenance situation; they had a problem with load factor miscalculation, and filed a plan with the FAA to fix it. It looks to me like they deliberately are doing the bulk of the work during snowstorms, when many flights have to be cancelled anyway.