Skift Take
After disrupting the trips of more than 2 million travelers, yes, as in the equivalent of Kansas City metro, Southwest says it's back to plan by March.
Two months. That’s how long Southwest Airlines expects there to be an impact on bookings from its massive holiday meltdown that disrupted millions of travelers over Christmas and New Years.
The Dallas-based carrier forecasts a $300-350 million hit to revenues as a result of the meltdown in January and February, it disclosed in its fourth-quarter results Thursday. That is on top of the roughly $800 million hit it took in December. But, by March, executives are confident that the fallout — at least on its earnings statement — will be fully behind it.
“I think we’re going to be very pleased with the [financial performance in the month of March,” Southwest Chief Commercial Officer said during the airline’s earnings call Thursday. “It feels like we’re, kind of, back on plan.”
That’s pretty remarkable considering the magnitude of the disruption that began on December 21 and continued through New Years Eve. Southwest canceled more than 16,700 flights or, put another way, nearly 40 percent of its schedule over that 11 day period. That, based on back of the notebook calculations using its average of 83 percent of seats filled during the fourth quarter, equals as many as 2.2 million affected travelers (the actual number may be lower because some travelers are connecting on two or more flights).
Put another way, the number of travelers impacted by Southwest’s meltdown was equal to the population of the Kansas City metro area.
“I'm not proud of what happened,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan told investors on the call. He apologized again for the meltdown and then, along with Chief Operations Officer Andrew Watterson, detailed all the steps the carrier has and is taking to ensure a comparable meltdown does