Southwest cuts jobs at four more airports as belt-tightening continues
Southwest Airlines is cutting employees at four major airports in California and Maryland, the latest belt-tightening in the carrier’s ongoing shakeup.
The Dallas-based carrier will cut a combined 120 ground handling and provisioning frontline employees at four international hubs: Burbank, California; Los Angeles; San José (California) Mineta; and Baltimore/Washington-Thurgood Marshall.
“Our current flight schedule and modest growth plan for 2025 require alignments to our workforce at four airports where we operate,” Southwest Airlines spokesman Chris Perry said in a statement.
“We always try to minimize the impact to our Employees and all will have an opportunity to remain with Southwest.”
The cuts will be effective June 1.
Southwest is in the middle of a series of cutbacks, after activist investor Elliott Management waged a contentious fight over the company’s strategies and leadership. The battle culminated in a board shakeup and changes to signature Southwest offerings.
These latest reductions will impact employees who help prepare planes to fly at airports, including loading luggage and other supplies onto aircraft.
“With a Companywide focus on maximizing efficiencies and minimizing costs, Southwest continues to identify opportunities to optimize our network,” the company said in a memo to employees.
“We always try to minimize Employee impact when making tough decisions, and any decision that affects our People is considered only after exhausting all other possibilities,” the memo said.
“Reducing our staffing in these locations in no way reflects our employees’ performance, and we’re proud of the hospitality and the efforts you have made and will continue to make with our Customers in all our locations.”
Southwest said in February that it would lay off 1,750 corporate positions across the company and last year it made reductions at two airports in Atlanta and at Chicago O’Hare.
The company also completely pulled service at airports in Bellingham, Houston’s Intercontinental Airport, Cozumel in Mexico and Syracuse, New York.
The carrier is also implementing assigned seating and announced earlier this month that it was getting rid of its “bag fly free” philosophy.
Southwest is still waiting for the moves to pay off. The company’s stock price has made gains in the past month, but is essentially flat year-to-date.
“The changes at Southwest are massive moves from legacy plans and require not only execution but for the company to not alienate its customer base along the way,” Melius Research analysts Connor Cunningham and Patrick Coleman said in a note to investors Wednesday.
“For 50 years, Southwest has banked on a simplistic product where bags fly free, there were no cancellation fees and there was an open seating policy,” the analysts wrote.
Before the changes, “… Southwest didn’t have the bells and whistles others had but it was made up for with other amenities other airlines were nickeling and diming you on.”