Southwest wasn’t alone in handing back as much money as possible to investors rather than spending more on the business. Indeed, when US airlines got a Covid-related bailout at the beginning of the pandemic, it was done with a ban on buy-backs and dividend payments, as well as staff lay-offs. Both these had increased in recent decades, as airlines attempted to do ever more with less, hiring cheaper staff and pushing older workers with fatter pensions aside.
The same could be said for any number of US companies that have worked over the past half century to bolster “efficiency” rather than resilience. Consider the rise and fall of Jack Welch, the former chief executive of General Electric, who turned the manufacturing company into a too-big-to-fail financial institution.
The financialisation of airlines in general and Southwest in particular may have reached a peak. It’s hard to imagine efficiency going much further when seats are hardly big enough for human bodies, companies are charging for snacks and even drinks, selling more tickets than they have aircraft to service and dealing with failing technological infrastructure.
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