Southwest has a creative solution for excessive cabin heat

The airline is spending several million on a problem that can harm flight attendants.

Jun 28, 2025 - 18:30
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Southwest has a creative solution for excessive cabin heat

Established in the 1960s out of Dallas, Southwest Airlines (LUV) in the extinguish expanded to a nationwide network with a heavy presence in cities that can reach particularly high temperatures in the summer.

Shall we embrace, two Southwest bases, Phoenix and Las Vegas, every noticed higher than 100 days whereby temperatures reached over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) in 2024.

When weather is that outrageous, air crew members can face risks that attain not occur when temperatures are decrease.

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A surprising Washington Publish document from 2024 showed that the airline recorded not decrease than 20 flight attendant injuries from soda cans that exploded attributable to excessive warmth closing summer. In most instances, the can deformed and broke as the flight attendant used to be pouring from it (no passenger injuries hang been recorded as of date).

"Our summers are extending, and that product is beneath that intense warmth for longer lessons of time," Steve Land, who oversees meals and beverage deliveries at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, instantaneous CBS news.

Southwest addresses risks of exploding soda cans

With the summer season now in full swing, Southwest has addressed the spot of exploding soda cans by procuring for 60 refrigerated offer vans for transporting drinks to the airline’s Boeing 737 (BA) planes.

This may also use warmth weapons to tune temperatures of its comfy drink shares and toss out ones that hang overheated earlier than they are handed out.

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"Once it got up to 105, 110 [degrees], you started hearing the cans earlier than you even noticed them — you may per chance hear them deforming," Jake Stoddard, another ground worker accountable of delivering meals to Southwest planes, described to CBS.

"When it used to be 115, 120, half of your stock may be deformed, so yeah, it used to be bad."

As first reported by Easy Flying, the gives will seemingly be despatched to Phoenix Sky Harbor Worldwide and Harry Reid Worldwide Airport in Las Vegas; the uncover will position the airline encourage a couple of million bucks.

The vans will also double as cooling units that tarmac crew can enter for breaks from the blazing solar.

Overheated steel cans can grow to be a hazard aboard an airplane.

Image source: Shutterstock

Southwest 'taking steps to abet onboard drinks cooler,' airline says

"We're aware of the spot and hang been taking steps to abet onboard drinks cooler, particularly in our airports experiencing outrageous temperatures," a Southwest manual said to Easy Flying in July 2024. "Or not it is a pass-realistic effort between our airport teams and these in the air."

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Grievous warmth has grow to be an an increasing selection of consistent spot for airways as changing temperatures affect all the pieces from which flights travelers take. For event, statistics effect that many are opting away from previously popular places like southern Spain and Italy at some stage in the summer months.

"Our purpose is to give ample lead time so dispatchers and other resolution makers can receive proactive operational choices, in position of looking ahead to something to happen," Delta (DAL) 's chief meteorologist Warren Weston said in an interview in 2023.

"The influence of climate switch has humbled us all," Rick Cotton, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in another interview on the discipline.

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