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Southwest airlines ceo gary kelly
Southwest airlines ceo gary kelly












southwest airlines ceo gary kelly southwest airlines ceo gary kelly

And so, yes, it's going to take some time for healthy companies to repair themselves. And I don't know what it was like in World War II or going back a hundred years to the Spanish Flu and World War I, but it's really bad. KELLY: You know, it's easily the worst thing that's happened for, you know, post-war babies like me in my life. Well, now I think you're going to see more real estate sharing with home offices. And it's sort of, you know, the equivalent of Uber and ridesharing. So, in a lot of ways, we're like other companies in that we have corporate staffs and corporate functions, and I do think that you'll see more remote work, more flexibility for our employees. I don't see us going back and having everyone go back into the call centers, as just one example.

southwest airlines ceo gary kelly

It really wasn't high on our agenda, believe it or not. When would that have happened at Southwest? I don't know. And now the vast majority of our call center employees are working from home, taking calls. We-before the pandemic, we were not taking calls from our call centers at home, if you will. It has accelerated the transformation, let's just say, of working remotely, working virtually. But on the other hand, you know, this is a big event. KELLY: Well, I think we would all be very wise to assume that some things are going to change. And we want to do all that we can to keep our costs low so that fares are affordable in this kind of an environment. We'll still want to find ways to innovate and especially drive more efficiency and more productivity in an environment like this, because there will be inflation. So up and down the line, I feel very good about our 50 years that we've had-this is our 50th anniversary-and I think that we're very well-prepared for the future. We have single-class service that we're very proud of. We have a very generous frequent flyer program. We need to keep our fares low and make sure that they're affordable for consumers. We're a low-cost carrier in the first place. Right now, business travel is down 90 percent. And right now, I'm going to assume that it's going to be substantially less than that, half of that or more. In normal times, we'd be looking at 35 to 40 percent of our demand traveling for business.

southwest airlines ceo gary kelly

So, it just gives you some sense, in other words, of how much demand there is out there. As we're looking forward to the next couple of months, I'm hoping that it will get into the 70s. Right now, our load factors at reduced flying are about 65 percent. Having said that, we've looked at our strategy, and we think that we're very well-prepared with the Southwest as you know it for this kind of an environment. So, I do think that we have to be agile, mentally agile here, and be prepared to pivot and make some changes. It's a very dramatic change for the world, and certainly for travel and tourism. So, my hope is that by the time we get to the end of this year that we have most of this pandemic behind us. So, we're very prepared to see that that kind of demand in the future and still be successful. And knowing how habits have changed in this virtual world, it could be much longer than that. If you look at past recessions, it's taken five years on average for business travel to recover to pre-recession levels. So, I don't expect business travel to recover in that time period. Our hope is that by the time we get to June, where you've had much of the population having had access to vaccinations, that, you know, we've got a chance at breaking even, at least. However, you know, I would just offer up, pontificate a little bit, if you will, that we have two large segments of traffic-business travels and consumers, traveling for a variety of reasons-right now we're very dependent upon consumers to fill up our airplanes. So, given that, it's still hard to forecast. It's still down 65 percent, at least in February. Our business is still off relative to 2019 levels, you know, pre-pandemic levels. So, I'll just kind of start out with that. KELLY: You know, David, this is 44 years for me in business, and I've never had a point in my life where it was impossible to forecast.














Southwest airlines ceo gary kelly