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Operational Failure Archive · D02 - Key Person Redundancy · D05 - Measurement Sophistication · D06 - Technology Coherence

OFA-02 : Southwest Airlines

A documented operational failure at Southwest Airlines, analyzed for the lessons it holds for mid-market operations leaders.

OFA-02 : Southwest Airlines - Headroom HQ

Section 01 : Overview

Company - Southwest Airlines Company

Time Period - December 2022

Operational Failure -

Winter Storm Elliott triggered widespread crew delays, overwhelming Southwest's legacy crew-scheduling software and halting its automated reassignments.
It revealed that Southwest had been operating its core Tier 1 infrastructure as an undocumented single point of failure for years, with no tested backup protocol and no measurement system that could have detected the risk before the storm triggered it.

Impacted Dimensions -

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