Based on the actual quote from the article:

“The big issue is that Florida is roughly 15% of our trips, but on any given day, upwards of 50% of our aircraft lines flow through Florida,” Jordan told TPG. “You’ve got all those lines that just stopped in Florida, so you’ve got a lot of aircraft caught up in that,” he said.

Are you telling me that SW is so unique that it is the only airline with so much flow in Florida? I genuinely don't know. Do you happen to know?

It's a couple lines down. Read the whole thing.

> Jordan said it was particularly the line-flow system that Southwest uses as part of a point-to-point network that made it harder for Southwest to recover than other airlines with heavy exposure in Florida, such as American, which has a hub in Miami as part of its hub-and-spoke network.

Southwest is unusual in having this "line-flow" system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-point_transit

I am learning a lot today, so I feel I should thank you.

The link you provided lists Allegiant Air as one of the other airlines that flies to/from FL ( and uses the same system ), but there is no report same issues as SW has/had.

For the record, I don't really care one way or another, but I am not that big on taking executives word at face value; even outgoing ones.

Geez, rather than concluding "Allegiant uses the same system, they have no problems, therefore the SW CEO must be lying" (a conclusion that probably pleases you because that's another win for your pet theory that CEOs can't be trusted), why not do your own investigation as to why Allegiant might have escaped this problem? A good scientist tries to disprove her own theories to make sure it's robust.

I saw several of your replies scrolling through this page, yeah, you need to learn a lot.

I am first to admit that there are a lot of things I simply do not know, but because of this I am also willing to accept evidence presented once presented.

Am I wrong to ask why two seemingly similar systemsrespond differently to an event that seemingly should affect them the same way? I do not think so. If the approach is wrong, then tell me that. I am not a scientist. I am just a guy on the interwebs, who sees flimsy excuse for an excuse and calls it out.

Southwest had the most cancelled flights, Allegiant had the second most, and Spirit had the third most. I googled “Allegiant cancelled flights” and got dozens of news stories.

The FAA problem was in Jacksonville. Wikipedia lists Allegiant’s top Florida destinations as Orlando, St Pete, and Ft Myers. Also, according to Wikipedia, Jacksonville is a minor city for Allegiant.

> I am also willing to accept evidence presented once presented

I think what rankles a bit is you are coming up with these pet theories that force others to present easily obtainable (including from TFA) information. So no, you're not wrong to ask the question, you're wrong to have demonstrated contrarianism rather than curiosity.

How about you start reading the actual article, rather than pushing a conspiracy theory by Just Asking Questions, that are answered in the article that is being discussed.

You're literally asking "Is geography so unique that only planes in a certain geography fly a large number of planes in a certain state".

I mean the answer is easy here. Weather affects all airlines equally. The possibility of a sick out only affects those airlines whose pilots were able to organize.

The claim it's the weather is the one that needs extraordinary evidence because the claim is that weather that day only affected Southwest, whereas the claim Southwest pilots were the only ones to organize makes more sense.

The Florida explanation doesn't make sense because my parents also had issues going from CA to Oregon.

Occam's razor

Occam's Razor doesn't obviate bad priors. In this case a major area with big impact for Southwest got grounded, with knock on effects on flight scheduling as machines and crews couldn't get to next stop in time.

> Weather affects all airlines equally.

Nah. Storms are often highly localized, and different airlines have different cities they fly a lot through. A nasty storm cloud over Miami might not interrupt flights over Fort Lauderdale.

Weather over Chicago is gonna screw up ops for United. Weather over Atlanta will fuck up Delta.

> The Florida explanation doesn't make sense because my parents also had issues going from CA to Oregon. Occam’s razor.

Unfortunately, the simplest Occam’s Razor explanation is ignorance here.

Here’s an example Southwest flight. Tampa to St. Louis to LAX to San Jose.

https://www.southwest.com/air/flight-status/path.html?depart...

You might be flying LAX to SJC, but still be affected by planes getting stuck in Florida.

If both management and labor say it's not X, Occam's razor would almost immediately eliminate X.

It would probably eliminate X even if one of them said it's not X assuming the other did not say it is.