Ask Southwest Airlines employees about their company’s technology, and one word keeps coming up: “antiquated.”
While Southwest grew from a scrappy, Texas-based discount airline operating three planes into one of the nation’s largest — union officials representing Southwest workers say the company did not keep pace with technology changes. And they say they’ve been raising concerns for years.
“We’ve been harping on them since 2015-ish every year,” Mike Santoro, a captain and vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told CNN.
The result: A massive Christmas travel meltdown that scuttled holiday plans for hundreds of thousands of passengers. Nearly 16,000 flights canceled. Orphaned baggage piling up at airports and