Re:Still waiting on the real story here (Score 1)

Very insightful, but everyone is ignoring the REAL story. Most Southwest employees (like everyone else) like to spent their nights with their families. A long-standing Southwest policy allows employees to ride free after their shifts to their home locations. They can also ride free from their homes to their starting flight--policy requires that they don't take the last flight; there must be a backup flight scheduled after the one they pick. Needless to say, this means they arrive early at their first paid flight and have to hang around for a while. Southwest takes these "staging" flights seriously. I have known standby and already-boarded passengers to be bumped so a Southwest employee can get to his flight, This additional complication greatly contributes to the complexity of the problem. One cancelled flight that prevents an employee(s) from completing a crew complement prevents the next flight from flying which prevents the next crewmember(s) from reporting which causes the next flight..., You can easily see the cascade effect.