Southwest Airlines fined $140M for holiday travel fiasco

SEATAC, Wash. — Holiday travel is on people’s minds, but so is the air travel meltdown that came right around this time last year.

Southwest Airlines saw its system fail across the country and it has reached a multi-million dollar settlement on the issue, agreeing to pay a $140 million settlement over the flight-cancelling meltdown.

Duffy Drum was leaving for a flight Monday morning at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and remembered what happened last year.

“I read an article this morning in the (Wall Street Journal), a little bit about how they made improvements and they’re not real concerned, folks at Southwest, about a repeat of that,” said Drum.

Drum is headed to Denver just a year after Southwest’s major travel meltdown, but clearly, he’s not concerned.

Ditto for Michelle Doiron, who’s headed to Florida on Southwest. For her, there are no worries that computers could cause problems this year and she was forgiving to Southwest a year later.

“The friend I’m going to meet, she paid for the ticket so I don’t have any issues at all — computer glitch,” Doiron said.

Millions will be paid by Southwest to settle the issue of the airline’s massive failures during last year’s holiday travel.

Southwest will pay a $35 million fine for canceling nearly 17,000 flights after a winter storm paralyzed operations and Southwest’s crew rescheduling system couldn’t keep up.

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said holding the airline accountable is key.

“We send a signal to the entire industry about the need to prevent these issues from happening. That means realistic schedules,” he said.

Southwest says it is improving winter operations, with more de-icing trucks and equipment. It’s also changed its network operations control, to build a more manageable schedule.

For Southwest, there could soon be an announcement about the investigation into the 2022 travel troubles.

While Southwest did reach this settlement, the airline also said that it didn’t violate consumer protection laws.

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