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Southwest Airlines will hire flight attendants again as demand returns to air travel

Dallas-based Southwest could start training classes for flight attendants as early as this summer and is hiring for ground employees nationwide.

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines is planning to hire flight attendants again for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago, a major turnaround for an industry that only a few months ago was begging for government support to stay afloat.

All of its flight attendants on leave will have been recalled by June 1 and “looking forward ... we will need to hire flight attendants to support future operational needs,” Southwest spokesman Brian Parrish said.

“Southwest Airlines anticipates hiring additional flight attendants to support the airline’s late 2021 and early 2022 schedule,” the company shared in a note to employees this week. “While it is too early for us to confirm the exact number of new-hire flight attendants that our schedule might require, we look forward to the possibility of welcoming new members to our inflight operations team later this year.”

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The company could start new flight attendant training classes this summer, Parrish said.

Southwest was the nation’s largest airline in pandemic-stricken 2020 and had 15,400 flight attendants on the payroll at the end of 2020 -- 600 fewer than the year before. The company aggressively offered buyout and voluntary leave packages to flight attendants and other employees last year and cut back on hours to accommodate flying schedules that were reduced by the pandemic.

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While Southwest did threaten to furlough workers, it kept everyone working after getting billions in government payroll support. Southwest promised not to furlough any employees this year after a second deal for government payroll support was reached in December. Southwest has received about $8.4 billion in grants.

The company is also starting to hire ground workers at some airports, Parrish said.

Airlines such as Southwest are anticipating a busy summer travel season after the slow days of 2020 when passengers were afraid to fly and government restrictions often prevented them from doing so comfortably.

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Southwest leaders indicated last month that the company was thinking about hiring again, as other airlines have indicated they are ready to do as well. However, CEO Gary Kelly warned that the company didn’t want to start hiring when demand is hard to forecast.

“It’s just not easy to predict, and then it’s not easy to execute and we also don’t want to end up with excess staffing,” he said. “But, we’ve been a hiring machine for 50 years and I feel like we’ll do well when we’re ready to turn that back on.”

Southwest said it isn’t ready to start hiring pilots again, something that rivals such as American and United have already started to do. Pilots are often the first to be hired because it can take three months or longer to complete the necessary training.