at this time because of the requirement to wear a mask. That is just stupid.

Believe it or not it has nothing to do with the vaccine either.

Airlines got killed during covid. Billions of dollars lost.

As flying started to pick up leading into this last summer Southwest Management built their schedule to the maximum of what they thought their workforce could handle. After losing so much money they did as much flying as they possibly could to try and turn a profit and if not at least stop some of the financial bleeding. I don't blame them. That's what good management would do.

Unfortunately they overestimated their ability.

Southwest has been extremely understaffed across all work groups for months. The same can be said for all airlines.

It has led to a very hectic summer flying season. Pilots go to work thinking they are flying one thing only to have it change before they even start their trips. Scheduled trips are being extended sometimes 2-3 days beyond what the pilot was suppose to work. It's chaos and honestly it sucks. I have been living it since June.

Like I said in the other post morale amongst the pilot group isn't good right now. It's not the pilots fault either. You can only stretch a workgroup so thin before they finally burn out. That's what happened this weekend.

The Southwest system got disrupted because of weather in Florida and a closure and Jacksonville Center Control. When disruptions happen you have to cover the flying downstream of the initial canceled flights. The initial disruption was legit. There really was weather and atc issues.

When they started trying to force flying onto an already worn out pilot group the pilots rejected it. In many cases they did so by calling in sick. From there it snowballed.

Management created this problem. It's not the pilot's fault. You can only squeeze so much out of a sponge before it runs dry.