Will holiday flying be mayhem again this year? Here's how airlines have prepared for 2023

You stand in a long line that snakes along four rows separated by ropes, holding the handle of your luggage as it leans next to you.

The line never seems to move. Everyone ahead of you feels as weary and impatient as you are, desperate for an answer to why their flight is delayed or canceled and when they can expect to get to their destination. Your airline's customer service counter is so close, yet so far.

You get an alert on your phone. Your flight's been delayed. Again.

In recent years, disruptions affecting air travel have happened with greater frequency.

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Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration are working to prevent them, especially during the busy end-of-year travel period. AAA is forecasting that 115.2 million Americans will travel for Christmas and New Year's in 2023. This includes 7.5 million who intend to fly, a record number.

Some airlines are refining their operations and infrastructure to better cope with issues out of their control, like severe weather, as well as to prevent computer glitches and other malfunctions within their control.

Southwest Airlines is under scrutiny this year after a major service disruption that canceled thousands of flights and stranded travelers for several days between Christmas and New Year’s Day last year.

Southwest, which operates the second-greatest flight capacity at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport after American Airlines, recently told investors it may be subject to a penalty from the U.S. Department of Transportation following its investigation into last December’s disruption.

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What's behind the computer glitches that have disrupted flights

In the last two years, the air travel industry experienced numerous disruptions caused by technical issues. Some were nationwide, while others were local to specific airports such as Sky Harbor.

Aug. 4, 2022: Southwest Airlines experienced a computer outage local to Sky Harbor because of stormy weather. FlightAware data from that day recorded at least 81 delayed and 24 canceled Southwest flights at Sky Harbor.

Dec. 21-31, 2022: A technical glitch at Southwest Airlines affecting the software used to schedule its crew, compounded with winter storms disrupting operations at its Chicago and Denver hubs, led to the cancellation of 16,700 flights over the last 11 days of 2022. The U.S. Department of Transportation investigated the meltdown.

Jan. 11: The FAA had a computer glitch that grounded flights nationwide for about an hour and a half, causing delays and cancellations. The glitch, blamed on a corrupted database file, affected the FAA's NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system that alerts pilots of weather and other issues that could affect their flight.

April 18: Southwest Airlines grounded flights for a few hours because of a technical glitch in its internal data systems.

July 24: Sky Harbor had 212 delayed and nine canceled flights after the FAA experienced a telecommunications issue at its Albuquerque field office.

Sept. 5: United Airlines grounded flights nationwide for about an hour after because of a technical glitch.

Why airlines are having more computer meltdowns

Breakdowns often occur from little to no investment in updating the technical infrastructure that airlines and the FAA depend on for their operations.

For instance, airlines need their computer systems to work to schedule their pilots and crew. The FAA needs its systems to work for air traffic control and navigation, as well as to send communications to pilots about weather, airport conditions and potential hazards.

Many air travel disruptions of recent memory involving computer glitches have coincided with other issues like severe weather and staffing shortages, said Henry Harteveldt, an aviation industry expert who is the founder and president of Atmosphere Research Group, a travel industry advisory firm.

While Southwest is well known for operating on outdated technology, United Airlines also experienced issues in recent months. After days of delayed and canceled flights out of Newark, New Jersey, during the Fourth of July weekend because of severe weather and air traffic control issues, United's staff recognized it needed to improve the software it uses to schedule its flight crews, Harteveldt said.

Recent technical issues forced the air travel industry to assess its computer systems to make sure they will run as smoothly as possible during the holidays, he said.

"The airlines are taking steps to include their IT," Harteveldt said. "I think they will all be better conditioned this Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's than they were a year ago. But they will be the first to admit that not everything they need will be in place. And it will vary airline to airline."

What Southwest Airlines has done to prevent flight disruptions

Southwest Airlines is working to avoid the mistakes of December 2022, when operational and technology breakdowns blamed in part on winter storms and issues with outdated computer systems triggered flight cancellations and stranded passengers at airports nationwide, including Sky Harbor.

The U.S. DOT, which is investigating the disruption, notified Southwest Airlines on Oct. 27 that it found the company “failed to provide adequate customer service assistance, prompt flight status notifications and proper and prompt refunds and that the assessment of a civil penalty is warranted,” according to a report Southwest filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

While Southwest Airlines did not answer questions from The Arizona Republic, airline staff did discuss in a recent earnings call what they’ve done to improve their operational and technology issues since last December’s disruption.

They began implementing a three-part action plan. According to Southwest’s chief operating officer Andrew Watterson, this included:

1. Improving winter operations: Southwest added de-icing equipment in key areas prone to severe winter weather and is training ramp agents on de-icing.

2. Enhancing cross-team collaboration: The network planning and network operations teams have been placed together to improve the quality and efficiency of decision-making. A new group known as the network disruption pod will lead the company through high-risk disruptions. The airline also conducted training by simulating winter weather scenarios in what staff often called “war games.”

3. Investing in operations: Southwest is working on improving aging infrastructure. For instance, it improved the tool responsible for notifying crews of flight assignments and will introduce software that will support aircraft and crew networks when weather-related disruptions occur. Customer service phone lines have been upgraded to handle greater call volumes.

Taken together, Watterson said these actions position Southwest to better respond to issues that may arise during the winter months, adding he feels “confident” going into the holiday season.

“The disruption we had last winter was really hard on our customers and our employees,” he said. “It weighed heavily on all of us here at Southwest Airlines. We have a lot of pride based on our 50-plus-year history. So, preparing to prevent something like that from happening again was and is imperative.”

Southwest also introduced a new bag tracking service that gives passengers the ability to track checked bags at the airport and in flight, an investment the company accelerated because of the disruption, said Ryan Green, Southwest’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer.

“By providing additional transparency and information to customers about where their bags are during their travel journey, we're elevating the travel experience and removing friction for our customers,” Green said during the earnings call.

What United Airlines has done to prevent flight disruptions

United Airlines, whose troubles in Newark during the Fourth of July weekend and an outage in September disrupted its service, is addressing the need to update its infrastructure as part of its response.

During its second quarter 2023 earnings call in July, United president Brett Hart told investors the airline would increase its resources and crew scheduling, as well as accelerate efforts to roll out technology enhancements and automation.

Hart pointed to a new feature on United's mobile app that provides traveler support during disruptions, including rebooking flights, tracking luggage and providing meal and hotel vouchers when eligible.

"It is important for us to provide our customers the resources they need for their flight at their fingertips, especially when things don't go as planned," he said during the call.

United did not respond to questions from The Republic regarding its computer systems. But at the time of the disruption in Newark, the airline said in a statement to The Republic that it was taking an "all hands on deck" approach to resolving the disruption. This included contact center teams working overtime on customer support and off-duty flight attendants calling in from across the U.S. to staff open trips.

Harteveldt, the aviation industry expert, thinks Southwest and United's issues are forcing other airlines to take proactive steps to prevent disruptions of their own.

"The events at Southwest and United were wake-up calls to airlines all over the world who went back and said, 'Look, let's make sure we're ready for not only bad weather, but not only that we don't have any bad unintended consequences,'" he said.

What American Airlines has done to prevent flight disruptions

One example is American Airlines, Sky Harbor's most lucrative carrier with nearly 40% of its flight capacity. Last summer the airline said it began automating the process of recovery from severe weather using a tool called the Hub Efficiency Analytics Tool.

HEAT is powered by data on weather, how full American's flights are, customer connections, gate availability and staffing issues. It uses this data to adjust flight schedules and keep customers, crews and planes moving when severe weather threatens to disrupt flights.

In a July announcement, American officials said HEAT was initially deployed in 2022 and prevented about 1,000 flight cancellations.

American Airlines did not respond to questions from The Republic regarding its computer systems.

What the FAA has done to prevent flight disruptions

As for the FAA, the glitch that affected its NOTAM system last January accelerated an effort to modernize the system.

Since 2012, the FAA has been working on modernizing the NOTAM information technology architecture and stationing it "in a public central location, in a manner that is Internet-accessible, machine-readable and searchable," said Billy Nolen, the acting FAA administrator at the time of the January outage. (His successor, Michael Whitaker, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in October.)

"We expect that a significant portion of the modernization work will be complete by mid-2025," Nolen said in January in a statement to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. "We continue to assess the feasibility of accelerating the current schedule."

The FAA is continuing efforts to improve its National Airspace System infrastructure, which provides data to air traffic controllers, pilots and other airspace users to help with safe navigation. The FAA told The Republic that it established contingency plans for commonly recurring events and emergencies, as well as a "resilient" architecture and backup system.

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How did airlines fare in preventing disruptions for Thanksgiving 2023?

They passed the test.

On Nov. 27 — the day after the traditional peak of the Thanksgiving travel season — American Airlines announced a “record-breaking Thanksgiving operation.” It had more than 6.5 million passengers on 59,400 scheduled flights across the country from Nov. 16-26. Out of those flights, just 55 were canceled, all of which were weather-related.

In a statement, the airline credited “American’s 130,000 team members who worked safely and tirelessly over the holiday period, along with great support from our partners at the Federal Aviation Administration, Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”

The Republic reached out to American asking for specifics on how its staff achieved these results.

Southwest Airlines, responding to an inquiry from The Republic, said it flew about 2.6 million passengers on more than 20,000 flights from Nov. 22-26. The airline completed almost all of its scheduled flights, and about 84% of them arrived on time. The airline later stated that 97% of its Thanksgiving Day flights arrived on time with no cancellations or diversions.

Thanksgiving 2023 flight disruptions in Phoenix were minor

Few difficulties ensnared airlines and airports in the days immediately after Thanksgiving. Here’s what it looked like at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, according to FlightAware data:

• Friday, Nov. 24: One cancellation, 145 delays.

• Saturday, Nov. 25: Four cancellations, 225 delays.

• Sunday, Nov. 26: One cancellation, 308 delays.

• Monday, Nov. 27: No cancellations, 213 delays.

Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @salerno_phx.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How airlines in Phoenix are working to avoid holiday cancellations