DALLAS – Southwest Airlines will reduce flights the rest of the year as it tries to restore an operation that stumbled over the summer and is now facing lower demand due to rising coronavirus cases.
LUV Southwest,
said Thursday it will reduce its September schedule by 27 flights a day, or less than 1%, and cut 162 flights a day, or 4.5% of the schedule, from early October to 5 p.m. of November.
The Dallas-based airline said it expects to make similar schedule cuts in November and December, except on holidays.
The Southwest has struggled all summer with a large number of delayed and canceled flights.
“We are confident that these adjustments will create a more reliable travel experience,” President and CEO Gary Kelly said in a statement released by the airline. He apologized to the airline to any customer “that the trip with us was lower than expected this summer.”
The Southwest has blamed bad weather, but the airline appears to have no staff. The pilots’ union said this month that without timetable cuts, the airline’s operational problems would continue.
Southwest said Thursday it is hiring “aggressively.” It has recently started offering incentives to employees referring to new hires.
Hourly cuts come two weeks after Southwest warned it is unlikely to make a profit in the third quarter without counting federal aid for payroll costs. The airline also reduced revenue forecasts because ticket sales have declined and cancellations have increased since the delta variant led to an increase in COVID-19 cases.
Southwest was more aggressive than its closest rivals in trying to grab a larger share of the market as travel increased this year.
By October, Southwest planned to make 92% of the flights it made the same month in 2019, before the pandemic, according to data from aviation data firm Cirium. Delta DAL,
American AAL,
and United UAL,
plans to fly between 82% and 87% of its 2019 flights in October.