A passenger attacks a Southwest airline employee in Atlanta 1:30
(CNN) --
A flurry of severe winter weather last week caused thousands of Southwest Airlines flight cancellations and led to a complete collapse of its flight system.
In the days since, the airline's fight to recover has been slow and, some passengers argue, largely unsuccessful.
But experts say Southwest's mess is actually the culmination of problems that have been building up for several years.
Since December 22, the embattled airline has canceled more than half its regular flight itinerary, and as of Wednesday night, about 87% of all canceled flights in the US were from Southwest alone, according to industry trackers FlightRadar24 and FlightAware.
The dire situation, which has exasperated passengers and drawn the attention of government regulators, has been magnified this week as other major airlines recovered from the extreme cold, ice and snow that gripped much of the United States over the weekend. holiday week.
ANALYSIS |
Why is Southwest collapsing?
The company apologized to its passengers and employees for the daily cancellations and reduced its capacity by about two-thirds on Thursday, according to a CNN review of flight data.
This week's collapse is not the first time the company has found itself in this situation.
In October 2021, Southwest canceled more than 2,000 flights in a four-day period.
While the airline blamed bad weather in Florida for the crisis in part, Southwest canceled flights for much longer than its competitors.
But much of Southwest's mess may be the result of long-term issues unrelated to the weather.
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Chief among these are outdated internal processes and information technology.
Southwest's scheduling system hasn't changed much since the 1990s, according to Capt. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.
Southwest has also acknowledged the company's aging infrastructure.
"We've talked a lot about modernizing the operation and the need to do it," CEO Bob Jordan told employees in a memo obtained by CNN.
Over the years, the airline's cancellation rate has increased, tripling from 2013 to September 2022, according to the most recent data available from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which tracks the performance of airlines. airlines, and well before the recent crisis.
The bureau has only released data for 2022 through September.
To ensure a fair comparison, CNN only analyzed carrier data for January through September in prior years.
Cancellation rates among airlines fluctuate from year to year, depending on the weather and other factors, such as covid-19, which resulted in major disruption across the industry in the early months of the pandemic in 2020.
But Southwest has consistently failed to perform as well as its competitors when it comes to cancellations, according to bureau data.
In several years over the past decade, the airline had higher cancellation rates compared to other major carriers, the data shows.
It's not just cancellations.
Southwest has also seen its on-time percentage drop in recent years to the lowest point in a decade.
As of September 2022, long before the airline's current difficulties, only 7 out of 10 of its flights were on time.
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