Southwest CEO: It may be 10 years before business travel returns so we’re focusing on leisure fliers

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said Thursday the airline is focusing its operations on leisure fliers, citing the difficulty in predicting when business travel will rebound in earnest from the coronavirus pandemic. Kelly said it usually takes about five years for corporate travel to begin expanding again after recessions. “You’ve got believe that will at least be the case now,” he added. “And I’ve said before, it may be 10 years before business travel recovers. I don’t know. But we’re going to be prepared to be more dependent upon consumer travel, and we will do well in that environment.” The airline reported Thursday its largest-ever quarterly loss of $1.2b as the pandemic continues to dent demand. Southwest’s Q3 operating revenue of $1.8b represented a 68% decline compared with a year earlier. However, its daily cash burn of roughly $16m in the period was an improvement over about $23m per day in Q2. Kelly said he believes the doomsday predictions are unlikely to materialize. “My opinion is that this too shall pass. Just like 9/11, everybody said the world is going to change, people aren’t going to fly. They were wrong,” he said. “I do think there is a need for business people to travel and I think that that will get back to ‘normal’ at some point. I’ll bet you it’s a long time from now... But that’s just my opinion. What we have to plan for is different. ... We’ve got to manage this risk, and so we have to assume we’ll be more dependent on consumers in terms of our demand in the future.”<br/>