Their unions say Southwest has been too investor-focused for years and underinvested in operations. What is your response to this criticism?
I’ve often been asked if we have outdated technology. We spend a billion dollars a year on technology here at Southwest. And like any business, there are always things that are brand new, like our maintenance system, and there are always things you are working on.
We have a really good operational improvement plan. Team planning plays a major role in this. If you just look back over the last year, I think we’ve rolled out eight new versions of SkySolver. We hired 120 crew planners. We took matters into our own hands and realigned ourselves. I’m not saying for a minute that we’re done or that that’s enough.
The shareholder question is not an individual decision. We are financially very healthy. Because of this, we don’t have to choose between investing in technology or investing in our shareholders. During the holidays we went to rewards, offered thank you money, we made goodwill gestures for our employees as well as for our customers.
How do you regain the trust of your customers?
We have a 51 year history of operating a really good airline and great service. That didn’t change just because we had this event.
That doesn’t rule out the fact that we screwed it up. I think the best thing we can do is use this event as a catalyst to get even better. This is a great company, but the best we can do for our customers is to keep providing a great product and keep investing in our product. You’ve seen us do all these things – we add power connectors and larger containers. Keep investing in them, keep running a great operation, keep providing great hospitality and keep getting better.
Can you help us understand when you knew something was really going wrong at Christmas?
We plan days and days in advance for storms, hurricanes—all of those things. We monitor the operation every day; our managers call several times a day just to understand how we are doing. I call several times a day, on a normal day. All of that was going on.
