Dallas-based Southwest Airlines has announced plans to limit the number of new hires, including pilots, and stop flying out of multiple airports following financial struggles in recent months.
Robert Jordan, CEO of Southwest Airlines, said the company has already developed a plan “to address [the company’s] financial underperformance.”
The plan is expected to include a slowdown in hiring and asking employees to take extended time off, reported ABC News. The airline anticipates having 2,000 fewer employees by the end of 2024.
The changes come after a challenging financial first quarter. Southwest lost $231 million in the first three months of fiscal year 2024, per ABC News.
Southwest will stop flying to four airports: Cozumel, Mexico; Syracuse, New York; Bellingham, Washington; and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas.
Additionally, Southwest expects to receive just 20 Boeing aircraft this year, down from the previous estimate of 46 aircraft and the original yearly estimate of 85, per Reuters.
The decision to hire fewer pilots does not come as a surprise, as Chris Perry, spokesperson for Southwest, said earlier this year that the airline would likely hire fewer pilots to account for various changes within the company.
“Southwest is slowing hiring across the company in 2024 to levels at or below our attrition rate, and we’ve adjusted pilot hiring in line with our current business plan,” he said, according to The Dallas Morning News.
The airline added roughly 1,800 new pilots in 2023 and expects to hire “just south of 350” new pilots in 2024. However, no new pilots are expected to be added in the final nine months of the year, per DMN.
The down first quarter was not limited to Southwest. American Airlines also reported losses of $312 million, attributing the reason to an 18% increase in the cost of labor, per ABC News.
These reports come shortly after the pilot union for American Airlines sent an email to members to express concerns about safety with the inspection of aircraft being used by the airline.
The union highlighted “problematic trends” occurring within the airline, noting that there have been less frequent safety inspections and “abbreviated” testing for aircraft that had recently received maintenance or had issues, reported The Dallas Express.
The airlines’ underperformance and pending changes come amid an increase in the number of aviation concerns in recent months. As previously reported by DX, Boeing was investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board a record number of times in 2023.
Similarly, whistleblower Sam Salehpour, Boeing quality engineer, recently testified in front of the U.S. Senate and said he believes every Boeing 737 aircraft should be grounded and evaluated for quality.
Salehpour told the Senate that “Boeing hit problems” while attempting to account for the high number of orders, choosing to use “excessive force to make them appear that the gaps don’t exist even though they exist.”
“The gap didn’t actually go away, and this may result in premature fatigue failure. Effectively, they are putting out defective airplanes,” Salehpour said.
As previously reported by DX, Southwest has been one of a number of firms in the air travel industry to come under fire for making a priority of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
