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Southwest Airlines is working so hard to repair its corporate ship that it enlists Dallas headquarters employees as shift volunteers to help with crew planning.
Quoting leaked memo Posted on Wednesday, Business Insider reported that the shifts will last eight hours and run across the clock. The airline also wants employees to take a break from their regular jobs and make a brief shift.
Southwest told Insider that the additional staff helps. Nonetheless, the memo made no mention of additional compensation for anyone who answers the decision.
Reportedly, the brand new crew planners are undergoing extensive training. The memo said that untrained corporate employees can be trained using a “train the trainer” approach – essentially following planners to learn the ropes on the fly. Crew planners handle the logistics to make sure Southwest flights have properly scheduled cabin crew members who know their flight assignments.
The volunteer scheduling call appears to be related to the airline’s disastrous holiday weekend. Thanks partially to the “once in a generation” winter storm, greater than 9,000 flights – greater than 91% of domestic flights alone – were canceled between Sunday and Wednesday.
The storm wasn’t entirely in charge as Insider reported that Southwest was moving on outdated softwarealthough an airline representative indicated that there could also be an update to the system within the near future. The representative said that within the “desirable state” of Southwest, the airline “can have automation that may handle crew reassignment quickly and efficiently.”
Late Wednesday, Latest York Times reported that greater than 2,300 Thursday flights had already been cancelled, with the airline saying “it could be days before normal services resume”.