Pete Buttigieg has some issues he must fix: I flew domestically on the day after Christmas. I showed up at San Jose Airport, as usual, two hours before my flight. When I pulled into departures, I saw something I’d never seen before – a line out the door, stretching down the block. I cursed under my breath, thinking the line was for the security checkpoint – what else could cause such a backup? – and that I would have to take my place in the back.
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Well, the line wasn’t for security. The line was for the Southwest Airlines desk. Apparently, Southwest had canceled every single flight departing from the airport.
Having booked on Alaska, I was spared the line, and I was not stranded. Actually, truth be told, I benefited from the line and the Southwest cancellations – the check-in and security checkpoints were sparsely populated, and I cruised straight through to my gate.
Turns out, the problem was not isolated to the San Jose Airport. Southwest Airlines canceled over 2,500 flights during the holiday weekend – roughly 62% of their total schedule. The airline announced, after severe winter weather disrupted normal operations, that they would only be running one-third of their scheduled flights as they attempted to return to normal, “meaning it would continue to cancel close to 2,500 flights a day.” Since Dec. 22, Southwest has canceled 13,000 flights, stranding an estimated 1 million travelers.
By comparison, Delta Airlines, American Airlines, and United Airlines each canceled fewer than 40 flights a day.
Essentially, Southwest Airlines has melted down, causing widespread anger not just at the airline but at the industry – and at the secretary charged with overseeing the industry, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
Peter Buttigieg failed to intervene
The Department of Transportation failed to intervene despite receiving “thousands of consumer complaints about America’s airlines and was ‘unable or unwilling’ to hold the industry accountable,” wrote the Attorneys General of 38 states, territories, and the District of Columbia in a letter to Congress dated Aug. 31.
The letter continued, warning that the DOT was leaving a “vacuum of oversight” that “allows airlines to mistreat consumers and leaves consumers without effective redress.”
The letter pressed Congress to take the responsibility of investigating airline customer complaints away from the DOT – and instead allow a consumer protection agency, like the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission, to investigate the complaints.
Buttigieg didn’t really do anything in response to the letter.
He just went on television in September, charmed his way through one of James Corden’s fawning interviews, and told U.S. travelers that everything was going to be A-OK in time for holiday travel.
“I think its going to get better by the holidays,” Buttigieg told Corden. “We’re really pressing the airlines to deliver better service.”
The Attorneys General sent another letter, directly to Buttigieg, on Dec. 16, imploring the Transportation Secretary to “impose significant fines for cancellations and extended delays that are not weather-related or otherwise unavoidable.”
Buttigieg chose not to enforce any sort of cancellation penalty and the result is what we got: 13,000 canceled Southwest flights.
Buttigieg’s true colors shine through
Buttigieg marketed himself as a progressive throughout the 2020 presidential campaign.
Many of us called BS.
Buttigieg seemed to be conforming to the zeitgeist, which called for progressivism, when in reality, his track record demonstrated a more mainstream, corporatist allegiance.
Buttigieg was a Harvard/Oxford graduate who had gone to work for McKinsey. David Axelrod, the man who had helped make Barack Obama, another false progressive, plucked Buttigieg from obscurity. I
t wasn’t much of a stretch to suspect Buttigieg wasn’t all that working-class oriented.
Well, when faced with a decision of whether to enforce penalties on a corporate entity – Southwest Airlines – or let common, everyday American consumers get wrenched around at the whims of that corporate entity at their own financial hazard, Buttigieg chose the latter.
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Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison lives in Oregon and listens to Dokken.
