A Southwest Airlines executive apologized for the company's holiday season meltdown in front of a panel of senators on Thursday.

The airline company canceled nearly 17,000 flights and stranded more than two million customers between December 21 and December 31 following a winter storm, far more than any other airline. The Senate Commerce Committee questioned executives in a hearing that focused on those disruptions.

"Let me be clear, we messed up," Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told senators. "I want to sincerely and humbly apologize to those impacted by the disruption,"

"In hindsight, we did not have enough winter operational resiliency," Watterson explained.

The Southwest executive assured the committee that the company has been working to improve its systems.

"We are doing a system-wide review of our preparedness for winter operations and will implement any measures necessary to mitigate the risk of an event like this occurring in the future," Watterson said.

The company has budgeted $1.3 billion for 2023 investments, upgrades, and maintenance of their IT systems.

Democratic Senator Ed Markey, unsatisfied with the executive's explanation, demanded the airline company give a "cash hardship payment" to those affected.

Some Republicans, however, were more sympathetic with the airline company.

"I've had multiple conversations with senior leadership at Southwest. I'm confident they understand it was an epic screw-up and that they are committed to doing everything possible to prevent its recurrence," Sen.Ted Cruz of Texas said.

Watterson testified the airline had reimbursed 273,406 customers, and that every impacted customer had been emailed flyer points, along with an apology.

But, the airline company would not pay customers directly for their inconvenience unless it was "reimbursement of a flight they took in the disruption," Watterson said. 

The U.S. Transportation Department is also investigating Southwest for its flight scheduling throughout the disruption.

Share:
More In Business
Investors Look to Tesla Earnings Amid Record Q1 Deliveries, Shanghai Shutdown
Garrett Nelson, a senior analyst and VP of equity research at CFRA Research, joined Cheddar News to give a preview of Tesla earnings amid its seventh straight record quarter in vehicle deliveries while it faces some headwinds with the ongoing Shanghai, China, lockdown due to pandemic. "We view Tesla as one of the market's best secular growth stories," he said. "It's one of our top picks, and their execution has been really stellar over the last several quarters. They've beat nine of the past 10 quarters, so that's a 90 percent beat rate."
Netflix Faces Stiff Streaming Competition as Q1 Earnings Wait on Deck
Netflix is slated to give its Q1 report after the closing bell, and Jason Moser, a senior analyst at The Motley Fool, joined Cheddar News to give a preview of what to expect from the streaming giant's earnings. "I think Netflix, like many businesses out there the last couple of years, says it's pulled forward a lot of success just due to the pandemic, and that's not necessarily a bad thing," he said. "But it does alter the picture, the growth picture maybe, going forward." Moser also noted that the streaming space for Netflix is especially competitive now as opposed to about a decade ago.
Load More