Unions Call For Southwest Executives’ Ouster
by Michele McDonald /Photo: Ken Lund
Southwest Airlines’ pilots and mechanics unions joined together in conducting a vote of “No Confidence” in the airlines’ executives, particularly chief executive officer Gary Kelly and chief operating officer Mike Van de Ven, and called for their ouster.
The move followed Southwest’s massive technology meltdown that began on July 20 when a router, a device that connects multiple networks and forwards data packets between them, failed, and the backup system did not kick in.
Over the next three days, 2,300 flights were canceled and many more were delayed.
The unions said the incident was evidence of Southwest’s failure to invest in the airline’s technology infrastructure and its people, instead prioritizing short-term stock performance.
In a statement, Captain Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots’ Association, said, “There has been an inability to prioritize the expenditure of record-breaking revenues toward investments in critically outdated IT infrastructure and flight operations. These decisions have directly led to the operational failure at Midway Airport in January 2014, chaotic crew scheduling during the summers and holidays of 2014-2016, and our most recent ‘meltdown’ related to technological infrastructure this past month.”
Southwest’s aged technology is legendary in the industry. Its reservations system evolved from Braniff’s Cowboy system, for example, although it has been updated by Sabre over the years. That system is slated to be replaced by the Amadeus Altéa system next year.
During Southwest’s second-quarter earnings call, Kelly acknowledged the issue.
“Some of our older legacy applications were the culprit, whereas a lot of the newer technology did recover as planned, but it’s also integrated in networks,” he said. “Over the course of 12 hours, multiple things were attempted to try to recover very quickly, and ultimately they sort of went back to bedrock and rebooted everything.”
But Randy Babbitt, Southwest’s senior vice president of labor relations, said technology systems were not behind the unions’ call to fire Kelly and Van de Ven.
The pilots and mechanics have been working without contracts for nearly four years, and Babbitt said the move is “designed to pressure the company to meet its demands.”
In a statement, he said, “Their maneuvering is not about our leaders. It’s not about IT infrastructure. This is about the union’s approach to contract discussions and its attempt to gain leverage in negotiations.
“The state of our company demonstrates the excellence of our leaders,” he added.