New Southwest CEO Takes Over, Faces Challenges

Southwest Airways suffered two main disruptions in 2021, with large quantities of delays and cancellations in Could of that yr and once more in October.

And that’s not even counting the meltdown over the Christmas and New 12 months’s vacation that struck all airways attributable to staffing shortages and airline staff calling in sick with the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

That’s simply one of many challenges dealing with Robert Jordan because the longtime Southwest worker took over right now, February 1, because the airline’s new CEO.

Jordan replaces beloved CEO Gary Kelly, who was on the helm for 17 years.

Jordan has been with Southwest since 1988, and he’s been slowly groomed for the highest spot. However he’s already reducing his personal path, saying final month even earlier than he took over that he would take into account altering Southwest’s lengthy coverage of not assigning seats.

However that’s the least of his considerations proper now.

Among the challenges he faces are definitely not Southwest-centric. The {industry} as an entire has been battered by the pandemic the final two years, with enterprise journey nonetheless lagging far behind leisure journey. Southwest really suffered its first yearly loss in 2020 within the 50-year existence of the airline.

The Dallas-based service rebounded in 2021 and expects a revenue in 2022.

One other industry-wide downside is staffing.

Like most different airways, Southwest provided buyouts and early retirement to staff throughout the pandemic to assist additional trim workers. Like most different airways, Southwest didn’t anticipate the pent-up demand and sudden rebound in journey final spring and located itself actually caught short-handed.

“We had been hiring about 5,000 this fall, and for those who keep in mind, we had about 5,000 that took early retirement (in 2020 and 2021), so we’re making actually good progress,” Jordan advised the Related Press in an interview final month. “It’s tougher than regular. We get loads of functions, we simply don’t get as many functions for open jobs as we used to. We’re hiring much more in 2022, which is why I think it takes into the summer season to get caught up right here.”

However Jordan must work out the solutions to some challenges which are distinctive to Southwest, such because the operations points that induced the Could and October cancellations.

“I believe there are some issues that we are able to do to – I’ve used the phrase modernize. I don’t know if that’s a great phrase or not as a result of it’s not like we’re behind, however I do suppose we have to work on, for instance, our operational instruments,” Jordan mentioned. “… There are most likely instruments that we are able to use to extra rapidly discover issues and supply options.”

Jordan mentioned for now that he has no plans to vary Southwest’s longtime coverage of no bag charges or no change charges. However he’ll search for methods to, pardon the pun, navigate the corporate funds by way of turbulence.

“The (final) 21 months have been robust on individuals, so I need 2022 to be a yr the place we actually put money into our staff, love on our staff, after which get again to being persistently worthwhile,” he mentioned. “I’m not arguing (Southwest might be worthwhile) on the ranges that we want long run — I believe it’s going to take a short while to get there — however we’ve received to get again to sustained profitability versus off-and-on profitability.”