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Quick Take: Southwest Can’t Stop Lying Through Its Teeth

Southwest has been in the news lately for a series of unfortunate events that they have been through, and they are going through a self-inflicted PR nightmare because they seem to have an issue with being honest with people.

Story 1: 1000+ Flights Cancelled, it was bad weather guys!

First, there was the recent sick out/vacation out or whatever you want to call it [1, 2]. The point is that Southwest’s official reasoning as to why they had approximately 1800 flights delayed or cancelled was because of weather issues [3]. However, this is completely fabricated based on a couple of points of evidence. 

The FAA’s Flight Delay information – Air Traffic Control System Command Center

Screencaps from the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine show that on neither October 10th, or October 11th were delays noted in Texas or Florida. See the images below:




 The National Weather Service Data

The National Weather Service provides hourly data that is able to be stored for up to 2 days prior to the current day of inquiry. To show some correlation to the data from the FAA, I have the hourly data from Dallas Lovefield Airport [4, 5], and from Jacksonville International Airport [6, 7].  They were chosen because Dallas Lovefield is a main hub for Southwest Airlines, and there was local news from Jacksonville that reported weather issues as well [8]. What you will see is that in both cases, there was no evidence of severe weather in either area.




  

To end the first story. Southwest is lying, and official federal sources show that there was no evidence of weather-related delays documented for October 10th, or October 11 in Texas and Florida as was reported.

Story 2: We’re mandating because we’re federal contractors guys!

Today, I was reading financial news and saw that after the potential sick-out or walk-out, Southwest announced that they were doubling down on their vaccine mandate policy, and requiring their employees to get vaccinated by December 8th, 2021 which is the deadline for federal contractors. According to Seeking Alpha, the company claims that as a federal contractor, they must comply with this rule. Which, that may be a decent explanation if it wasn’t for the fact that they currently are not federal contractors.

There is a database that the government uses to track what companies accept which contracts from the federal government, and it’s open to the public due to transparency reasons. This means we’re able to search whether or not Southwest has ever received a government contract. I searched for “Southwest Airline” on the website known as the Federal Procurement Data System [10, 11, 12]. You can see in the screenshot below that Southwest’s most recent contract was in 2013 and that they received their first contract in 2004, all of which have been for the Department of Veterans Affairs under three different contract names (Southwest Airlines Company, Southwest Airlines Co, and Southwest Airlines Co.). 



In short, they’re not contractors and are under no obligation to abide by the December 8th, 2021 deadline. 

Lastly, Southwest Airlines management is full of clowns, and you should sell their stock for any profit you have made and immediately use them to buy puts/shorts against Southwest (Ticker: LUV) and make money off of dumb corporate decisions.

References:

1. https://www.rt.com/usa/537120-southwest-cancel-flights-mandates-weather/

2. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/12/southwest-airlines-enforce-vaccine-mandate-employees-515801

3. https://www.newsweek.com/southwest-airlines-cancellations-pilot-vaccine-mandate-1637440

4. https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KJAX.html

5. https://archive.ph/mVqeI

6. https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KDAL.html

7. https://archive.ph/HlrAB

8. https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2021/10/10/staffing-shortages-in-jacksonville-bad-weather-led-to-widespread-flight-delays-faa-says/

9. https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/search.do?q=southwest+airline+CONTRACTING_AGENCY_NAME%3A%22VETERANS+AFFAIRS%2C+DEPARTMENT+OF%22&s=FPDS.GOV&templateName=1.5.2&indexName=awardfull&sortBy=SIGNED_DATE&desc=Y

10. https://www.fpds.gov/fpdsng_cms/index.php/en/

11. https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/search.do?q=southwest+airline+CONTRACTING_AGENCY_NAME%3A%22VETERANS+AFFAIRS%2C+DEPARTMENT+OF%22&s=FPDS.GOV&templateName=1.5.2&indexName=awardfull&sortBy=SIGNED_DATE&desc=Y

12. https://archive.ph/o5G7x


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