question. i i think what s really needed, and this is not just an industry or not just a southwest thing. i think it s an overall industry problem. crew scheduling is a really complex job that takes about a year to learn to do the hardest parts. it s kind of still an entry level job and this is worldwide. i co-lead a linked in group of airline crew and professionals called the airline crewing enigma. we call it the enigma because no one really knows, outside of those who do the job, how it works. i think it s something that airlines really need to invest in the technology to do. southwest, i agree, is more difficult problem to solve because point-to-point. so an airline who has more of a hub and spoke operation, for example, one of our southwest competitors if they cancel dfw to la quad ga and back that s an
i m certainly not an investor relations expert my expertise is crew manplanning and scheduling. crew planning makes the schedules in advance, crew scheduling handles the 24/7 operation of those schedules. and i saw huge technology investments during my career there. i spent 20 years in that area of the airline before i left in late 2020. and, you know, a lot of the technology upgrades and investments are things that customers and crews don t see. for example, this is something that s publically available, southwest made a huge investment to move the crew systems to the cloud with aws in the more recent years. that s sort of a foundational thing that has to be done before other capabilities can be developed. aws being amazon web services, a big cloud provider. so you make an important point you were in there, you saw money going into technology for these
15,700 flights since december 22nd, including at least 2,500 scheduled for wednesday. but while other airlines have recovered, staff and union leaders have slammed southwest for failing to upgrade systems and critical infrastructure. flight attendants have been stranded. not only have they been stranded but they ve been left to try to contact crew scheduling for hours on end. if you look at our competitors right here in denver, united airlines, for instance, they went through the exact same weather system as we did, and they didn t cancel as many flights, and their recovery is very expeditious. reporter: southwest s cnn apologized to customers and crew in a video released tuesday. hear that i am truly sorry. reporter: but admitted that normal service would not be resumed until next week. we will fly a reduced schedule and reposition our people and planes. reporter: but for loyal southwest customers, the message to the cnn was simple.