Hi Friend,
Southwest
Airlines’ meltdown over the holiday season was inevitable. According to Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, “We’ve been having these issues for the past 20 months,” he told CNN. “We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”
Murray said the airline’s operations haven’t changed much since the 1990s. “It’s phones, it’s computers, it’s processing power, it’s the programs used to connect us to airplanes – that’s where the problem lies, and it’s systemic throughout the whole airline,” he said.
Larry Lorenzo a Southwest Airlines pilot for more than 35 years, wrote, “Unfortunately, the frontline employees have been watching this meltdown coming like a slow-motion train wreck for some time. And we’ve been begging our leadership to make much needed changes in order to avoid it. What happened yesterday started two decades ago.” He continued, “A half dozen small scale meltdowns occurred during the mid to late 2010’s. With each mini meltdown
leadership continued to ignore the pleas and warnings of the employees in the trenches. We were still operating with 1990’s technology. We didn’t have the tools we needed on the line to operate the sophisticated and large airline we had become. We could see that the wheels were about ready to fall off the bus. But no one in leadership would heed our pleas.”
Don’t be a Southwest! Do these five things instead:
Have a technology plan. In addition to a strategic plan, associations today should have a technology plan. A comprehensive plan is essential to guide challenging
decision making. (See below for one association’s plan.)