Unions call for ousting of Southwest Airlines CEO
Saturday, 02 Aug, 2016
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Two of the biggest unions at Southwest Airlines have called for the ousting of the airline’s CEO due to a systems outage which caused thousands of flights to be cancelled or delayed.
Unions that represent pilots and mechanics said the company is spending too much money buying back shares and not enough on ‘critically outdated IT infrastructure and flight operations.’
The pilots’ union board voted 20-0 to demand that CEO Gary Kelly and chief operating officer Mike Van de Ven be replaced.
The outage was the ‘final straw’ on top of stalled contract negotiations, the mechanics union said.
Randy Babbitt, Southwest’s senior vice president of labor relations says it is all part of the union’s bargaining process ahead of more contract talks.
Their maneuvering is not about our leaders. It’s not about ‘IT infrastructure. This is about the union’s approach to contract discussions and its attempt to gain leverage in negotiations." Babbit said in a statement.
Kelly said the July 20 outage was caused by a solitary router breakdown that caused it to cancel more than 2,000 flights and it took four days for the airline to fully recover.
However this doesn’t stack up according to a number of independent tech experts.
You can’t blame the router. The router triggered a chain reaction that should not have happened," said Doron Pinhas, chief technology officer of Continuity Software Inc.
Lev Lesokhin, executive vice president of software analysis firm Cast, was similarly unimpressed with Southwest’s reason for the outage.
"When you have an outage like this that lasts as long as this one did and takes as long to put back on track, that’s typically a software issue," he said.
Southwest admitted the disruption cost the airline ‘tens of millions’ of dollars.’
TravelMole Editorial Team
Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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