Southwest Airlines Faces Shareholder Activism, Reshuffles Leadership To Strengthen Ops

After the holiday meltdown with over 16,000 flight cancellations, Southwest Airlines Co LUV announced five department leadership changes to strengthen operations.
The company promoted vice president of network planning, Adam Decaire, to SVP of network planning & network operations control (NOC), effective immediately.
Related: Southwest's Holiday Crisis Could Cost It Up To First Nine Months Of FY22 Earnings, Analysts Say.
"This change creates a tighter feedback loop between schedule design and schedule execution while adding resiliency and reliability to the network," the carrier said.
During winter storm Elliott, Southwest's crew scheduling software failed to bear a load of staffing changes.
The airline and workers had to manually match crew and planes, which led to substantial waiting times for pilots and cabin crew.
The meltdown has drawn the attention of a large public pension system with a history of shareholder activism.
According to DiNapoli, Southwest's response to the meltdown has been inadequate.
"Clearly this crisis has resulted in profound customer dissatisfaction and is expected to generate significant costs to the company," New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a letter to Southwest Chief Executive Bob Jordan.
New York's state pension system owned $17.6 million worth of Southwest stock as of Sept. 30, Wall Street Journal reported citing a securities filing.
Price Action: LUV shares closed at $35.59 on Monday.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons