A strategy session at 40,000 feet: How Southwest Airlines used the pandemic to outmaneuver the majors

Gary Kelly had no visibility. The numbers that the Southwest Airlines CEO surveyed in April of last year were unspeakably catastrophic, and he had no indicators to foresee if the pandemic signaled a brief nosedive or a slow-motion crash. “Each week when the finance team sent me the figures for our operations, they would provide commentary that was typically upbeat,” he told Fortune. But the “color” that accompanied the report for the week of April 5, 2020, evoked the lowest of low-down blues.… (fortune.com) More...