Southwest apologises for flight cancellations during US senate hearing

Southwest Airlines’ (SWA) chief operating officer Andrew Watterson said the carrier “messed up” and did not show “enough winter operational resilience” during late December storms that led to it cancelling 16,700 flights. Addressing a US senate hearing on strengthening airline operations and consumer protections, Watterson confirmed the carrier planned to spend $1.3bn in 2023 on upgrading IT systems after an outage contributed to the flight cancellations. “From December 21st to December 29th, Southwest experienced a historic event with a combination of challenges we hadn’t experienced before. What began as a weather event on December 21st turned into a crew scheduling