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, CEO Gary Kelly said in a video to employees Thursday.
Dallas-based 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 $1 billion 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.”…
