As coronavirus restrictions began to loosen in the spring, Southwest Airlines ramped up its schedule in an attempt to satisfy customers anxious to resume travel. But a combination of weather issues and lack of staffing led to the cancellation of numerous flights in the spring and summer, stranding and angering travelers.
Incoming CEO Robert Jordan, who takes over managing the airline in February, vows it won’t happen again. Jordan is aiming to add thousands of employees to the company and will trim the flight schedule if hiring doesn’t keep up.
Jordan, currently the executive vice president of corporate services for Southwest, said the company is aiming to hire 5,000 additional employees this fall, and another 8,000 in 2022. CNBC reported that Southwest is already nearly halfway to its fall goal, but finding workers has been a challenge.
“We’re pulling out every stop,” said Jordan.
The company is offering retention bonuses, referral bonuses, and has increased the minimum wage at the company to $15 an hour. Even with that, finding workers has been difficult.
In past years, the company would get 42 or 43 applications for every open position. Now, that number has dropped to just 14.
“The constraints have always been can we get aircraft, can we get facilities, can we get gates,” he told Business Insider. “I’ve never experienced a time when the constraint is, can we get employees.”
Southwest has already trimmed its flight schedule for the upcoming months and will be looking shortly to its spring flights. If the hiring goal is not keeping up with plans, Jordan said the airline will cancel more routes in 2022.
“The next question is the March schedule,” he said. “We plan to meet that, but if we find ourselves not able to hire to meet that, we’ll go back and look at modifying the schedule. What we’re not going to do is we’re not going to repeat last summer.”
As part of the hiring surge, Southwest officials reiterated its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“Summer 2020 was a season of learning for Southwest Airlines in many ways,” Jordan said in a statement. “It heightened our awareness of social injustice and initiated an increased focus on our own diversity and inclusion efforts. We started with evolving our existing company values around how we show up individually, how we treat each other, and how we work as a team.”
Jordan said enhancing diversity in hiring and improving retention and the upward mobility of employees are key goals.
“In the past year, we have taken tangible steps to update the required infrastructure, processes, and practices to meet these objectives,” he said.
For now, Jordan said airline officials are happy with the progress being made on the hiring front despite the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The holiday bookings are holding up really well,” Jordan said. “It feels like we are on the backside of this delta wave.”
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