Southwest CEO apologizes, says airline will ‘take care of’ customers after meltdown
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Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said on “Good Morning America” on Friday that the airline will reimburse customers impacted by this week’s meltdown, during which thousands of flights were canceled and travelers across the country were left stranded during the holidays.
“Our desire is to go above and beyond. We always take care of our customers, that’s our 51-year history here at Southwest Airlines,” Jordan said in the interview. “We’ll be looking at and taking care of things like rental cars, hotel rooms, meals, booking customers on other airlines, so that will all be part of what we’re covering here as we reimburse our customers and make good on this issue.”
Southwest Airlines — which is based out of Dallas — has built a reputation of transparency and trustworthy customer service. Experts say Southwest faces an uphill battle to regain public trust after the upheaval.
During Friday’s interview on “Good Morning America,” Jordan spoke optimistically about the airline’s renewed operations. Jordan said the airline was “off to a great start” Friday morning, with a full schedule of flights, 90% of which were on time.
According to FlightAware, which tracks flight delays and cancellations, about 1% of Southwest flights across the country were canceled Friday. In comparison, On Wednesday, 2,500 more flights were canceled, accounting for 61% of the airline’s flights. On Thursday afternoon, 2,300 flights — or more than half — had been canceled.
Jordan said the winter storm that hit parts of the country around Christmas played a part in the chaos, but added some problems were specific to Southwest Airlines. Jordan did not elaborate on what those issues were, but an internal Southwest Airlines memo indicates the airline’s outdated technology was overwhelmed by storm-related disruptions, according to the Washington Post.
“Let me just be straightforward here,” Jordan said in the interview. “The storm had an impact, but we had impacts beyond the storm that obviously impacted Southwest very differently.”
Looking to the future, Jordan said the the airline will continue to make investments in its “operational areas.”
“This is impacting so many people, so many customers over the holidays. It’s impacted our employees and I’m extremely sorry for that. There’s just no way almost to apologize enough because we love our customers, we love our people and really impacted their plans,” Jordan said. “There will be a lot of lessons learned that come out of this. We already had a great plan to invest in tools and technology and processes as we always do, but there will be a lot of lessons learned in terms of what we can do to make sure this never happens again.”
Southwest Airlines has faced national criticism for its handling of the meltdown. On Monday night, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced a review into whether the cancellations were controllable and whether Southwest was complying with its customer service plan.
Many have focused criticism on Jordan himself, who took over as Southwest Airline’s CEO in February. According to the Dallas Morning News, Jordan started in the position with a base salary of $700,000. During the interview with Good Morning America, he was asked what his response is to calls for him to resign.
“I think step one is to get the operation back on track,” he said. “The best way to serve our customers is to get the network going again.”
Jordan said he had a “great conversation” with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is calling on Southwest to do more for customers, and said he and Buttigieg are aligned in their goals to do right by customers and offering refunds.
Jordan said overall, the airline had “a lot of lessons learned in terms of what we can do to make sure this never happens again.”
TWU Local 555, the union for Southwest ground crews, said in a statement that many airline staff worked 16- to 18-hour days, and some suffered frostbite in sub-zero temperatures during the winter storm.
The union representing Southwest flight attendants, TWU Local 556, said the airline has been warned for years about technical issues that contributed to the mass cancellations.
Star-Telegram reporter Dalia Faheid contributed to this report.
