Southwest has also accelerated recruiting, though executives told investors last month that too many workers quitting and recruits demanding higher wages had slowed the efforts. “The hiring environment is the most difficult we have ever seen,” Gary Kelly, the airline’s chairman and chief executive, said at a December investor conference.
Critics say the industry deserves blame for its own troubles. Airlines received $54 billion in federal aid to keep workers employed during the pandemic on the condition that they avoid layoffs. But carriers thinned their ranks anyway by offering buyouts and early-retirement packages to thousands of workers.
Most airlines have yet to fully restore their work forces: As of October, the industry employed about 413,000 people, down almost 9 percent from the same month in 2019, according to federal data.
Airlines had reasons to reduce staff. Most have struggled to turn a profit consistently because the number of people flying has not fully recovered. The number of passengers who were screened at airports over the past two weeks was down about 15 percent compared with a similar period in 2019.
Omicron, of course, poses a threat to the industry, but some industry analysts believe its impact will be short-lived. “It’s put somewhere between, I think, a four- and a six-week standstill in what was the aviation recovery,” said John Grant, a senior analyst at OAG, a firm that provides global travel data.
Indeed, millions of people have boarded flights in the United States over the past two weeks, despite the variant’s spread, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
But Omicron has made it more difficult for airlines to operate. Even before the pandemic, storms could destabilize an airline’s holiday schedule. This season, the problem was compounded by high numbers of employees calling in sick.
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