Featured Map for 30 December 2022:
Southwest's Post-Freeze Meltdown

Winter Storm Elliott brought brutally cold temperatures across much of the contiguous 48 states of the United States, with blizzard conditions in many areas. Spanning the week leading up to Christmas, the storm predictably caused havoc with holiday travel, from a massive pileup on the Ohio Turnpike to widespread airline cancellations.

Most airlines quickly recovered, but uniquely, Southwest Airlines collapsed, cancelling a stunning 71% of their flights the day after Christmas according to FlightAware's data on flight cancellations (and delays). On Wednesday, 28 December 2022, 18 airports in the U.S. saw 100 or more scheduled flights (arrivals or departures) cancelled, a total of 3,130 operations. Out of those, 92% (2,881) were Southwest operations. (Note: FlightAware offers a wealth of data but combines arrivals and departures at a specific airport for a specific airline; since a cancelled arrival one day may result in a cancelled departure on a subsequent day the numbers don't add up cleanly.)

Today's Featured Map shows these 18 airports on Wednesday, with a red disc representing Southwest's number of scheduled operations overlayed with a yellow-orange disc representing the number of cancelled operations. Southwest's largest not-a-hub is Denver, where 53% or 292 planned flight operations were cancelled. At Nashville, there's not much red because 75% of operations were cancelled. At Buffalo (not on the map), zero of Southwest's scheduled flights operated.

One remarkable aspect of the map is the number of airports in California, plus nearby Las Vegas and Phoenix, which escaped the deep freeze yet were still crushed operationally, bolstering arguments that the root cause of the problem was a lack of investment in tools to manage the operations of a large airline, with bad weather simply being a trigger.

References and additional information:

• Southwest Airlines
  • Southwest Airlines Continues Recovering from Operational Challenges (29 December 2022)
  • Southwest Airlines Recovering from Operational Challenges (24 December 2022)
• Winter Storm Elliott Intensified Into Bomb Cyclone With High Winds, Blizzard Conditions, Flooding – Weather Underground (24 December 2022)
• 4 killed in massive 46-vehicle Ohio Turnpike crash in winter storm; cleanup takes 28 hours – Akron Beacon Journal (24 December 2022)
• FlightAware.com live flight delay and cancellation statistics for today – FlightAware
• The Southwest Meltdown Continues, I Failed To Follow My Own Advice – View From the Wing (26 December 2022)
• Southwest didn't heed calls to upgrade tech before meltdown, unions say – The Washington Post (28 December 2022)