Re:How Southwest Airlines melted down
by smugma on Thursday December 29, 2022 @02:52PM
(#34177080)
They lost $300M in Q1 and made $800M in Q2. They can take another $300M loss (1B?) in the short term to mitigate reputational damage and legislation.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
In the last fiscal quarter pre-pandemic, they had operating income of $3 billion on revenue of $22 billion, or 13%. This is not a low-margin business.
If they have operating income of eight to ten billion a year, spending a third of a billion to upgrade systems seems like it would have been a reasonable investment instead of buying back shares and increasing the dividend.