John and Lori Ingoldsby, who drove to Denver following the 1st leg of their flight on Southwest Airways was canceled, hold out for a flight to end their trip at Denver Global Airport on December 28, 2022 in Denver, Colorado.
Michael Ciaglo | Getty Photos
Southwest Airlines‘ chief running officer, Andrew Watterson, will deal with thoughts from a Senate panel subsequent Thursday about the carrier’s getaway meltdown that stranded hundreds of hundreds of tourists.
Southwest claimed the hearing day overlapped with “a previous commitment” for CEO Bob Jordan.
Jordan, who has been CEO for a calendar year, has vowed to get back again travelers’ have confidence in immediately after the debacle, which led to an $800 million-pretax strike very last quarter and pushed it into a decline.
Watterson plans to “use the possibility to clarify how we’ve taken steps to make things proper for our Customers considering that Southwest’s late December disruption, as perfectly as what we’re accomplishing to mitigate the danger of it happening again,” the airline claimed in a statement.
The incident has drawn greater scrutiny from Washington and capped a year of on-and-off disruptions in air journey, owing to lousy climate, staffing and technology issues.
The provider canceled additional than 16,700 flights among Dec. 21 and Dec. 31 as crew scheduling software was not able to continue to keep up with numerous flight variations in the wake critical winter season weather conditions.
The Senate Commerce Committee listening to will also incorporate testimony from Casey Murray, president of the Southwest pilots’ labor union Sharon Pinkerton, senior vice president of legislative and regulatory coverage at Airlines for The usa, an marketplace team that represents the country’s greatest airways Paul Hudson, president of customer rights group Flyers’ Rights and Clifford Winston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the committee chair, had earlier claimed she planned to hold a listening to on flight disruptions pursuing Southwest’s getaway vacation chaos.
