Articles tagged “southwest airlines”

With emotions likely to be high in 2021, it will be interesting to see how effective data crunching is when it comes to restarting travel.

Unprecedented losses forced airlines to focus on cash burn as the metric to watch early on during the coronavirus pandemic. The recent surge in new infections has delayed breakeven goals but, with billions of dollars on hand, most are looking ahead and getting ready for when travelers return in droves.

Airlines shed jobs at the fastest rate since 1990 this fall as they slashed costs to weather the coronavirus pandemic. With prospect of additional federal relief still mired in politics, very real questions remain about the industry's ability to ramp up flights once travelers — and the economy — return.

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly is a realist who's been through some tough downturns before. But he is frank about the unique challenges of this pandemic. He's trying to adhere to some basic business school principles on erasing debt and building cash, while preserving long-held Southwest traditions on taking care of its people.

In this Skift Aviation Forum video we hear from David Harvey, vice president, Southwest Business, about the airline’s strategy to better serve its business travel customers and partners.

Effective vaccines are one thing. Southwest and other airlines still need to gain the trust of event planners before they can bank on recovery momentum.

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.

Everyone forgets that in the moment in business, everything is cyclical, and the fate of business forever is bundling and unbundling over a period of time, even if they're put back together in different and potentially unrecognizable ways.

Why does CEO Gary Kelly say he's "happy"? The airline is aggressively going after leisure travelers and has added a bunch of new routes. Still, it's not all clear skies ahead for the LUV line, as potentially fractious union negotiations loom.

Airlines need to choose their battles carefully. In Southwest's case, will this combination of technology partnerships and airport testing be enough to bring business trips back at scale?