‘A little science and a little art’: Southwest’s Devereaux on cargo success

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Southwest Airlines was named domestic cargo airline of the year by the Airforwarders Association (AfA) at the AirCargo 2023 conference in Nashville, Tenn. this week. Wally Devereaux, vice president for cargo and charters at Southwest, accepted the award on behalf of the airline. Air Cargo Next caught up with Devereaux following the ceremony. What follows is an edited version of the conversation. Air Cargo Next : What do you think led to Southwest earning the award? Devereaux: You know — it’s almost cliche, to some degree — but it’s our people that do a really good job moving cargo. We have insourced in most of staff at our cargo locations are at Southwest Airlines cargo facilities around the country in most cases. We have some great vendor locations as well, but we’re heavily leant toward the Southwest Airlines-staffed facilities. [caption id="attachment_57134020" align="alignright" width="250"] Wally Devereaux, Vice President of Cargo and Charters for Southwest Airlines. (Photo/Southwest Airlines)[/caption] I think our people like the business; they’re passionate about the business; and they understand that we really, truly move important items on our aircraft every single day — in some cases, life-critical type items. They get it. They like it. They’re passionate about it. The other thing I think that helps us quite a bit is that we have a really good network. We serve a lot of locations, with a solid amount of frequency, which helps us in terms of redundancy in our flight schedule and work. We’re continuing to add more and more redundancies to the schedule as well. Air Cargo Next : How do you manage serving as both a passenger airline and a cargo airline in belly capacity? Devereaux: It’s a little bit of science and a little bit of art, really. If you think about above the wing, you know how many seats you’d have to sell. When you think about below the wing, we're estimating, essentially. We’re estimating how many passenger bags that we’ll have on the flight. We’re estimating how many passengers we’ll have on the flight as well — because that can change slightly. We do all this through a capacity management system, which estimates the bookings based on the latest booking data available. It estimates the bags that will be on board that aircraft, takes into account the aircraft type — because we do have 737-700s, 737-800s and 737-MAX-8s — so there’s a little difference there. What you don’t know is how much fuel that you might have to put on related to weather enroute for that particular day even. So, at the end of it, it’s based on the capacity that is needed based on weather enroute for that particular day. The capacity management system uses these factors to help us. We believe that we’re going to have this much weight or this much space is available to sell to shippers. … Then the expertise within the cargo capacity management team and boots on the ground and our cargo facilities say, “This is what we got. This is what we’re planning to do, and this is what we’re going to execute." Air Cargo Next : What system do you use for this scheduling? Devereaux: The system that we use for capacity management for cargo is called “CargoMax” and it’s a Sabre product. We use CargoMax from Sabre Airline Solutions, which ties into our proprietary operating system that we had built in-house … and also ties into a revenue management system that we utilize from a company called RTS. Air Cargo Next : How has Southwest perfected the system? Devereaux: The system helps a lot, because it gives a pretty darn good estimate on what it thinks is going to be available. So, we start there and then it has to be manipulated it a little bit based on a lot of different factors. That’s where you kind of have the science of the system and you have the art and expertise of the staff who are managing it. Air Cargo Next: What happens when legacy systems fail after being put in more difficult situations? What lessons has Southwest learned from that experience that you hope to change? Devereaux: The executive team at Southwest Airlines works on a full assessment of everything that went into play, whether that was technology-related or other. They’re working through all of those things to try to ensure that something like that never happens again. There’s a lot of work to be done there. Air Cargo Next : What changed for Southwest cargo in 2022? And what is going to change for Southwest cargo in 2023? Devereaux: One of the bigger things for us, it’s kind of been an evolution of our online booking product. We partner with a company called “Hangar A.” They’ve done a very nice job for us, in fact. So, we have a booking option, which is relatively new, that shippers have not previously been able to book in advance with us with some very small exceptions. Now we have this offering that allows for certain size shipments up to a certain weight and certain products that can be booked in advance. That’s been something that people have really liked. … Historically, shippers have shown up and then we plan it from there, you know, kind of when you get there, that's when we manifest based on the capacity that we have. Now you can actually book ahead for certain commodities. It’s not that it’s a new thing, but it’s been a big thing for us versus the way we’ve historically operated. For this year, we have a few things in store, but it would be premature for me to announce it.

‘A little science and a little art’: Southwest’s Devereaux on cargo success

AirCargo 2023

How to power a plane with leftover Chinese hot pot

Air cargo carriers boost freighter service to China

Related Posts

Cathay shares jump as carrier flags strong first-half profit

2 new operators start flying 737-400 freighters in H1

Cargo carriers rally to support Venezuela earthquake victims

Air cargo carriers boost freighter service to China

Cargo Facts Free Newsletters

Cargo Facts Connect Podcast

Follow Us

Welcome Back!

Retrieve your password