How Southwest Airlines Melted Down

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Business News, Daily News, News

4.2 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2023

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Severe winter weather impacted a lot of airlines this holiday season. But only one canceled more than 70% of its flights: Southwest. WSJ’s Alison Sider explains how the airline found itself at the center of one of the worst travel breakdowns in years. Further Reading: -How Southwest Airlines Melted Down -Southwest Says It Maintains Normal Schedule as Airline Processes Bags, Refunds -Southwest Airlines Cancellations Continue Further Listening: -While Airlines Shrink, Southwest Goes Big -How One Airline Sees the Future of Flying Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Did you fly this holiday season?
0:07.7	Oh no, no, I don't go anywhere over the holidays.
0:10.2	That's a nightmare.
0:11.2	I don't know why you do that.
0:13.4	Our colleague, Alison Cider, covers airlines.
0:15.8	So she knows holiday travel can be gnarly.
0:18.9	And she saw signs that this year would be especially bad.
0:24.0	The weather, the weak heading into Christmas was just pretty much the worst case scenario
0:28.5	for a really busy travel week.
0:30.3	You know, exactly what you'd hope would not happen.
0:32.7	More than 200 million Americans are under some form of winter storm advisory heading
0:37.0	into Christmas weekend.
0:38.8	National Weather Service alerts range from Washington state to Maine.
0:42.3	People were expecting really, really cold freezing sub-zero temperatures in a lot of the
0:47.1	country.
0:48.1	The deadly winter storm hitting Buffalo and Western New York really hard.
0:51.4	More than two feet of snow has fallen there.
0:54.0	Really high, gusty winds.
0:55.9	Snow, ice.
0:56.9	It's 35 miles an hour.
0:59.2	Dangerous wind chills today.
1:01.2	And it was over a lot of the country.
	...

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