DENVER — The CEO of Southwest Airlines promised to “double down” Tuesday on plans to improve know-how throughout the airline after a winter storm snarled operations for the home provider, stranding thousands of passengers in the course of the Christmas vacation.

In a video assertion launched late Tuesday afternoon, Bob Jordan blamed an unprecedented winter storm for creating the issue and apologized for challenges his airline continues to wrestle with as it really works to turn into absolutely operational once more.

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“Clearly we need to double down on already-existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what’s happening right now,” Jordan stated in a recorded assertion launched on Southwest’s information launch web page.

His assertion comes after unions for each pilots and flight crews publicly challenged the airline’s assertions that the struggles surrounding the airline’s schedule have been attributable to staffing issues and Winter Storm Elliott.

“Our COO and CEO today for about the first time alluded to the fact that this was the cause of it and it’s infrastructure…IT infrastructure,” stated Tom Nekouei, a Denver-based Southwest pilot and a part of the management workforce of the Southwest Pilots Association, which represents the airline’s greater than 10,000 pilots. “If you look at our history of meltdowns they’re getting to be more prevalent and they’re getting to be more severe and it’s taking us longer to recover from these meltdowns. We are woefully unprepared in terms of IT and how we deal with this growing network that we have.”

One of the main wrongdoer of issues this week is Southwest’s crew scheduling system, which Nekouei stated requires pilots and crewmembers to name in to speak about the place they should go or in the event that they name in sick.

“The backlog is 4-6 hours long and people are finally giving up,” he stated.

Corliss King, second vp of Transit Workers Union Local 556, which represents flight attendants within the system, stated making sick calls, reporting fatigue or just discovering out details about a flight is sort of unattainable.

“I think that people will have a hard time imagining being on hold for your job for 20 hours, 17 hours, 5 hours,” she stated. “Often it works. But when it doesn’t work, it’s catastrophic. We’ve asked them to bring our flying and our technology up to the airline we have today. This is not our airline from 1971.”

Southwest has grown exponentially over time to turn into one of many largest home carriers within the nation.

“We used to be a very small airline in the 70s and now we’re a behemoth – 4,000 flights a day – they will market about 5,000 flights a day down the road,” Nekouei stated. “Our infrastructure and specifically our IT infrastructure has never caught up with it because the company has not reinvested in the company.”

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The method Southwest routes flights might have additionally contributed to the problems.

“Southwest is uniquely vulnerable to weather problems, especially one as geographically extensive and as intensive as this storm has been,” journey business analyst Henry Harteveldt stated in an e-mail.

While different airways function as “hub and spoke” airways, guiding flights from a hub airport to locations then again to a hub, Southwest operates as a degree to level airline, typically working flights from coast to coast.

“So, when an extensive bad weather system hits, Southwest is affected in ways that other airlines are not,” Harteveldt wrote. “It also appears Southwest did not choose to pre-cancel flights in various cities as the airline learned more about the storm’s size, scope and expected direction of travel. Other airlines did, and that, along with their hub/spoke networks, allowed them to recover faster. Contrast American’s and United’s performances over the past few days to Southwest.”

One main concern in regards to the rash of cancellations for Southwest would be the influence on the airline’s model.

“We’re concerned about those return customers now,” Nekouei stated. “And whether or not they have long memories – especially if you strand them on Christmas – something that’s so sacred to people – whether or not they’re going to come back for years to come.”

The airline should do a number of work to earn again belief.

“The result may be that Southwest has to “buy back” disaffected vacationers with deeper low cost fares than it’d in any other case cost,” Harteveldt wrote. “The airline may also have to conduct more promotions than it had planned. And some portion of Southwest passengers who had to buy last-minute, likely expensive, flights on other airlines may find those other airlines to be as good as or possibly better than Southwest, and may not return.”

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