It's just a baseless rumor as far as I can see. SW says there's a staffing problem at "one location in florida," and blames weather otherwise. Meanwhile at least the SW pilot's union says "our pilots are not participating in any official or unofficial job actions." Union goes on to say the disruption is because of SW's "bad management."

Given that the people who are ostensibly striking have yet to say anything, I think that no one is striking or walking out.

edit: this is as close to a source as I've seen for the claim that there's striking workers: https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/1447259256001019906

Someone reported on reddit that...

> Pilots had to sleep at the airport because all the hotels were full. Since they weren't staying in beds or whatever, it didn't count as "crew rest" so all the crews were illegal.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/comments/q5a7hq/southwest_airli...

No idea if it's true or not though, and/or if that's the actual reason.

Whether that particular story is true or not, or whether it explains all of the cancellations, there is a kernel of truth in it.

> "The ones [cancellations] that showed up on Saturday they said were because of crew hours," said Stewart, noting airline flight crews are mandated to rest after so many hours on duty.

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2021/10/10/flights-c...

The alleged staffing problem was with air traffic control, not Southwest employees.

FAA says "it's not us"! (Except for a few hours on Friday.)

https://twitter.com/FAANews/status/1447358177935245315

And it does seem to be Southwest-specific:

https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/

SWA is my favorite airline, but their story doesn't add up here.

A union would be incredibly foolish to admit that it is engaging in an illegal wildcat strike, so I don't think that statement is particularly useful either way.

Frankly corporate PR has just as much likelihood of being honest as a random tweet. We now live in a zero trust society.

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz tweeted claiming it was because of the vaccine mandate. I haven't seen anything from reliable sources with direct knowledge saying it had anything to do with vaccines. There were FAA staff issues specifically with the Florida area.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2021/10/1...

https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/flight-delays-cancel...

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly and we've already had to ask you more than once. I don't want to ban you, so it would be good if you would review the site guidelines and use the site as intended: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I have edited my comment in an attempt to provide substantive detail.

You are going to ban him because what he posted doesn’t fit your narrative? You are censoring him.

The comment before it was edited was clearly breaking the site guidelines. That's the issue.

Senator Cruz did in fact tweet this: https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1447327311095910402

The informational content of that tweet, or if you regard it as more than mere uninteresting noise, is an entirely different and more subjective matter.

My take on it. If it was a strike I think we'd hear about it in more definitive terms than rumor. That's the point of a strike, disruption and attention.

So everyone just got sick?

Is there any indication that a greater than normal number of people are sick? The only people talking about a sickout that I can see are the ones who are congratulating the pilots on their sickout without any confirmation that there’s actually a sickout.

> Is there any indication that a greater than normal number of people are sick?

Aren't flights being cancelled? I guess people are just not showing up or something? I asked that question because if there isn't a protest then what? Something is being covered up, at least.

Lol, no, this started back in June; Southwest cancelled 2600 flights during that month and delayed something like 40% of its flights. It's a combination of several unrelated delays (weather, ATC staffing, military exercise) propagating back through the system and flight crews timing out before they can get to their final destination. It takes days if not longer for them to resolve these issues. There's no coverup; Southwest is just stretched too thin and has let their business get too fragile. And they're not alone: I feel like no one remembers American, United and Spirit all struggling with mass cancellations over the summer.

Everyone who? As far as I can see no one is missing. At least no one who will stand up and be counted. Makes more sense SW fucked up trying to pinch pennies and got caught with their pants down.

It’s referenced in the article.

When you say that, do you mean the part that reads

> Online speculation that Southwest’s new vaccine mandate has led pilots to stage a sickout is being denied by the union representing Southwest pilots.

To me,

>That follows reporting on social media that some of the issues the airline is suffering could be related to that issue. A spokesperson for the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) told the Arizona Republic it was not aware of any work stoppage and wouldn’t condone it anyway.

>SWAPA, however, has authorized its members to demonstrate against the mandate.

sounds like there is a vaccine mandate-related sickout going on, but it's officially unofficial. I don't know why that would be the case; there's no law against airline pilots doing such. Maybe the union doesn't want to be denounced for being allegedly "anti-science"?

Vaccines sickout would be a great misdirection for any company suffering an outage or internal failure. I haven’t actually heard of many of any effects ones though

Right, but unfortunately it leads to asking the most obvious question: Why are Southwest flight crews anti-vax when all the other airline flight crews are not?

That's dumb, and it makes no sense. But if it did, then everyone would want to know what the hell is wrong with the people at Southwest. Since it's not, the question is what the hell is wrong with the systems at Southwest.

Don't need to read too far into it as none of the other US based airlines didn't have any weather or FAA related issues over the weekend.