Southwest Airlines CE warns of pay cuts and a ‘drastically smaller airline’ if air travel doesn’t pick up soon

Southwest Airlines may have to force cuts in pay and benefits to avoid involuntary furloughs if air travel doesn’t improve dramatically in the coming months, CE Gary Kelly told employees Thursday. Southwest has suspended more than half of its flights and plans to drop more in the coming weeks. Kelly said the airline will lose more than US$1b in revenue in April because of the COVID-19 downturn. “If things don’t change dramatically over the May-June-July time periods, we’ll have to prepare ourselves for a drastically smaller airline,” Kelly said. “Life can be very humbling and as I’ve said several times, we’ll have to be prepared for every possible scenario.” Southwest has been slower to cut flights than other airlines but is still operating at a fraction of its regular size. <br/>