Incoming CEO at Southwest Air faces numerous challenges

Robert Jordan will inherit a long list of challenges when he becomes the sixth CEO of Southwest Airlines, which is struggling to recover from a pandemic that battered its finances and left it a much smaller company. Southwest had never lost money over an entire year in its half-century history until 2020, when it lost $3b. The Dallas-based carrier is likely to have finished 2021 in the black — it will report results later this month — thanks to more than $1.1b in federal pandemic relief. After thousands of employees left in 2020, staffing shortages contributed to high numbers of canceled and delayed flights on Southwest last summer and again in October. The airline is now on a hiring spree to catch up. Jordan joined Southwest in 1988 and rose through a series of finance and strategy jobs, including overseeing the $1.4b acquisition of AirTran Airways in 2011. In June, Southwest announced that Jordan would succeed Gary Kelly, who is retiring as CEO on Feb. 1 after 17 years leading the airline. Story features interview with Jordan about those flight disruptions, whether Southwest will charge for checking bags, and what kind of legacy he wants to leave. <br/>