Southwest promised better performance. Has it delivered?

DALLAS — More than half a year has elapsed since Southwest Airlines’ December meltdown displaced thousands of passengers and canceled flights for days across the country during the holidays.

The airline promised passengers that it has put measures in place so something of this magnitude would happen again. Southwest CEO Bob Jordan has praised the airline’s operational performance and continued to reiterate that customers have stayed loyal to the carrier.

“I guarantee there’ll be changes to our plan to put even more focus on operations because, I can’t say it enough, it just can’t happen again,” Jordan said during an interview with the Dallas Morning News in January.

So how has the Dallas-based carrier fared since then?

For the first six months of the year, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking data firm, Southwest had 709,073 flights in the U.S. and international flights in and out of the country scheduled, but it canceled 8,696 of those flights, or just 1.2%.

That figure is in line with competitor American Airlines, which operated 569,714 flights for the first half of 2023, canceling 5,552 flights, or 1.2%. Delta Air Lines canceled 1.4% of the carrier’s flights for the first half of the year and United Airlines canceled 2% of its flights.

Southwest’s on-time arrivals for the first half of the year were in line with its competitors as well. The carrier had 174,674 delayed arrivals, about 24.9%, for an average of 36 minutes delayed, according to FlightAware. Compared to American, which had 136,035 delayed arrivals, 24.2% of its flights, but an average delay time of 62 minutes.

Delta only delayed 19.4% of its arrivals for the first half of 2023 and United delayed 24.8% of its total flights for the first six months.

In the carrier’s latest quarterly earnings report, Jordan reiterated that Southwest delivered a reliable operation for the quarter.

“We operated a record number of flights and carried a record number of customers and bags, all while achieving a completion factor of more than 99% — our highest second quarter performance in the past 10 years,” Jordan said in a release. “This solid operating performance has continued into July, where we have been able to minimize cancellations amid continued weather challenges throughout the network.”

However, Jordan told investors on the call that the 2024 schedule has not been optimized, and Southwest is working to change schedules and routes, get more planes from Boeing and staff to better reflect the changing environment.

Southwest, unprepared for the freezing temperatures, ice and snow in late December, was forced to cancel flights and those disruptions cascaded across its network as the company’s technology was unable to keep up with the need to reassign pilots and flight attendants. In the days after the initial weather event, Southwest had to shut down most of its network to reset, putting out more than 2 million passengers during the key holiday travel period.

In March, Southwest rolled out a three-part plan focused on improving winter operations, accelerating operational investments and cross-team collaborations.

This summer was a test for what Southwest’s network could do under pressure ahead of the holidays. In July, according to Cirium Diio Mi, Southwest had 129,851 scheduled flights and 1,127 were canceled, or 0.87%. Of those July flights, 67.73% arrived on time.

Southwest also hired more than 8,000 new employees from January 1 to June 30, with the majority of those jobs filled in ground operations, flight attendants, pilots and other operational jobs.