10/09/2026
Empty planes kept leaving, Southwest’s pilots’ union told the Senate. The pilots were there, the union said. Southwest’s crew scheduling system had no current data on where they were.
Empty flights: testimony of Capt. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Feb 9, 2023: «During the meltdown, the Airline operated more than 500 empty flights.» Southwest’s own count of these flights was not found in its filings.
Southwest COO Andrew Watterson to the Senate: «They showed up. We had absolutely no problem with attendance nor service.»
Southwest 10-K (filed Feb 7, 2023): «While the Company is still assessing the causes of the disruption, the Company’s preliminary assessment is that the crew scheduling software worked as designed during this event.» It adds: «Without updated, accurate crew member data, the Company’s crew scheduling software could not reassign crew members to solve for flights with crew coverage issues.»
At the Senate, Feb 9, 2023, Watterson said the software «didn’t stop working,» that it «had a particular fault… fell down, so to speak, and overwhelmed,» and: «Yes, there were technology issues during the disruption and we don’t dispute that.» He named the root cause as «how we handled our winter operations… The last domino was the crew scheduling system.»
≈ $800M = Southwest’s estimate of the pre-tax financial impact of the whole disruption (10-K), not of the software alone.
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Sources: U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing «Strengthening Airline Operations and Consumer Protections», Feb 9, 2023 (S. Hrg. 118-487, GPO) · Southwest Airlines Form 10-K for FY2022, filed Feb 7, 2023 (SEC EDGAR)
