Southwest CEO on the Fight to Pare Losses and Avoid First Layoffs in 50 Years
Photo Credit: Southwest Airlines needs help from the federal government or concessions from its own employees to make it to the other side of the pandemic. Flickr / Midland Airport/Flickr
Skift Take
You know times are tough when a domestic airline with strong leisure roots like Southwest Airlines is in danger of breaking a half-century tradition of no layoffs or furloughs.
Optimistic news surrounding two coronavirus vaccines may have sent the stock market soaring, but that isn’t driving passengers any faster back to commercial airlines.
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly, while encouraged by the 95 percent efficacy rates in vaccines in development by Pfizer and Moderna, still thinks the airline industry is years away from a return to remotely normal operations. With his own airline bleeding around $10 million in cash each day, Kelly is looking to the U.S. government and his own employees for assistance to get to the other side of the crisis.
“None of those things individually will address the overstaffing problem just like furloughs won’t address the overall problems at Southwest,” Kelly said Thursday at Skift Aviation Forum during an interview with Airline Weekly Editor Madhu Unnikrishnan. “We’re going to have to get up and bat a lot of singles to hit our way out of this pandemic.”
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