Southwest’s meltdown could foreshadow a messy holiday season

Harteveldt said Southwest, one of the country’s largest airlines, has a “point-to-point” route network that makes it more difficult to recover than those that have crews and planes based in hubs.

But Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at Teal Group, said the entire air travel system is frayed after downsizing earlier in the pandemic and dealing with a choppy recovery.

“The industry’s never done this before,” he said. “It’s never contracted and expanded like this.”

Disruptions are inevitable, he said, when a business has to balance supply and demand with precision — especially when it’s difficult to predict what customer travel patterns will be in advance.

Aboulafia’s advice to travelers in the upcoming months: “Don’t expect precision. Be flexible. Allow slack.”