The Dallas-based airline confirmed to WFAA that employees impacted will have a chance to stay at Southwest.
DALLAS — Southwest Airlines is “restructuring” its workforce at four airports due to overstaffing, the airline confirmed to WFAA Wednesday.
According to a spokesperson from the Dallas-based airline, this isn’t a layoff, however, they are restructuring based on their needs. The spokesperson said Southwest is overstaffed in certa in work groups at the four airports and those employees will be shifted to where they can best support the airline.
“Our current flight schedule and modest growth plan for 2025 require alignments to our workforce at four airports where we operate,” Southwest said in a statement to WFAA. “We always try to minimize the impact to our Employees and all will have an opportunity to remain with Southwest.”
A memo from Southwest, originally obtained from our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal, said that it had made the difficult decision to reduce Ground Operations and Provisioning Frontline Employee staffing at the following airports:
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI)
- Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
- San Jose Mineta International (SJC)
- Hollywood Burbank Airport (BUR)
Southwest said in the memo that “a number of different factors have limited or slowed our planned capacity restoration and growth in BWI, LAX, SJC, and BUR, resulting in our overstaffed position in these locations.”
According to the airline, 120 employees across the two affected work groups were impacted by this restructuring.
Southwest said each of these employees will have three options: bid for open positions in different locations, apply for other open positions in the company, or depart Southwest with a severance package.
The restructuring comes after several major changes at the airline, including the elimination of its “Bags Fly Free” policy, the implementation of assigned seating, and the layoff of 1,700 corporate employees.
