Southwest airlines pilot union8/12/2023 This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. They declined to comment.Ĭopyright © 2022 NPR. But also we had a good conversation about what our employees faced and the challenges that were facing them as well.įADEL: Casey Murray is president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. He, you know, was very concerned, as I was, about our customers. We discussed, you know, the level and the chaos with this latest meltdown and kind of what we were seeing on our side. MURRAY: I did speak to Secretary Buttigieg yesterday. Have you sat down with anyone in the government to discuss what happened? But that being said, it's putting more and more pressure on our crews, you know, to make those decisions and understand when they're tired and taking that out of the error chain.įADEL: The level of cancellations this weekend, especially with Southwest, have reignited conversation about holding airlines accountable. So at the end of the day, our pilots are responsible for mitigating and stopping, you know, that risk. So - but that's part of the safety chain.Īnd breaking the error chain that causes accidents is our pilots' ability to make that call and go, listen, I am tired. And we've seen fatigue calls go through the roof and continue to increase. We have actually - as our pilots association - have done a written letter to - not a written - an open letter to our management just earlier this year about these exact issues but how it's causing unprecedented amounts of fatigue in our pilots. MURRAY: Well, at the end of the day, our pilots do a great job of mitigating risk, and ultimately it falls on them. And really, that's where we really failed, was not leading and not being able to give our employees the tools.įADEL: Does any of these problems with the processes and the tech issue - does that actually compromise safety of air travel? Whether it was pilots, whether it was customer service agents, whether it was ramp agents - they weren't given the tools to do their job nor were they given the leadership to answer the questions and to be able to provide solutions. But the employees were kind of left to their own devices. MURRAY: Well, we really feel, you know, for our customers who are stranded, who lost memories, who lost - you know. How has it affected your fellow pilots, other airline workers? What were they going through? I mean, we heard a lot about what the passengers were going through, but what was happening with employees? And you just can't operate like that.įADEL: Let's talk about what happened this weekend and what's still happening. And it cascaded to where, by the end of the three days, we had 1,200 pilots who were at work but never touched the wheel of an airplane, meaning they were either lost in hotels or deadheading around the system. And it started with a summer kind of, you know, simple thunderstorm in Florida. And 14 months ago, we had a major meltdown over Columbus Day. And the inefficiencies then - well, inefficiencies is the best word because crews get out of position. And it's really just not scaled for an operation that we have today.įADEL: So when you have this level of cancellations, you can't link the crew and the pilots to the planes? We're still using not only IT from the '90s, but also processes when our airline was a tenth of the size. And it's a function, as Kyle just said, of infrastructure and IT, but it's also processes. Southwest is having really some major issues connecting pilots to airplanes, connecting crews, flight attendants as well to airplanes. But on our end, we've seen an increasing amount of inefficiency of how crews are being used. MURRAY: Well, I think that's a question for Southwest. What happened over the Christmas weekend is really catastrophic.įADEL: Now, your union has been sounding the alarm about this problem and about a lack of investment, especially when it comes to technical advances for years. They've been coming with more frequency, and they've - becoming more severe. And the last 20 months, these meltdowns have seemed to occur. This has been an ongoing issue for Southwest for really quite a few years. I don't think most of our pilots were surprised. I mean, I guess I want to start, Casey, with whether you were surprised that this level of a disruption happened at Southwest when this - the storm came. Thanks for having me.įADEL: Thank you for being here. He's an airline captain and president of the Southwest Airlines Pilot Association.ĬASEY MURRAY: Good morning. So we're going to ask Casey Murray about this. The pilots who fly millions of Southwest Airlines passengers each year say the waves of canceled flights over the past few days point to long-standing problems at the airline.
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