Dallas-based Southwest Airlines is executing a layoff for the first time in the company's history. According to a letter from Southwest president & CEO Bob Jordan, the reduction in workforce will total about 1,750 employees on the corporate side of the company, representing about 15 percent of the staff.

Jordan calls it "a pivotal moment" and part of a three-year plan to boost revenues and loyalty, maximize efficiencies / minimize costs, and make the most of their investments.

The area they're giving "intense focus" to right now is maximizing efficiencies / minimizing costs, and that means creating a "lean organizational structure" by reducing duplication in staff.

The reduction in workforce will be focused almost entirely on corporate and leadership positions, and is scheduled to begin in late April. In the interim, affected employees will not work but will continue to receive salary, benefits, and bonus, if eligible.

Jordan's letter says that their goal is to support frontline employees as efficiently and effectively as possible, but that the company had unwittingly added more leadership and noncontract employees. It is this group that must shrink.

"We are building a leaner organization with increased clarity regarding what is most important, quicker decision making, and a focus on getting the right things done with urgency—not unlike our entrepreneurial founding spirit of the 1970s," Jordan says.

Other recent activities for Southwest include a restructuring of its board in October, and a shocking decision in July to allow assigned seating — a change in its signature open seating model which is observed for more than 50 years.

The company is also the target of a January 2025 lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Transportation for allowing certain flights to be chronically late. The suit focuses on a flight between Chicago and Oakland California and dates back to a period between April and July of 2022, a time period when flights were late more than half the time. Seems like water under the bridge but federal regulations prohibit airlines from promising schedules they do not fullfill because it's poor service and also allows airlines to unfairly capture business from competitors by misleading consumers.