How Southwest Airlines melted down
It’s fascinating that the same hopscotch travel pattern that allows SWA to offer better service to more places is also what caused the network to suffer cascading failure. Once a critical mass of pieces (planes&#x2F;crew) were out of position the whole network fell apart, and it’s large enough that it seems like neither the humans nor software can easily reason about how to resume operations. Hence the need for a “full system reboot” over many days.<p>Anecdotally, I flew Southwest just before Christmas. The network was already buckling and we had major delays, but we were lucky and made it through. Despite the stress, the SWA crews were helpful, empathetic, and polite. They handled it better than I would have if I had been in their shoes.