Acknowledging it has struggled with delays and cancellations this summer as travel has bounced back faster than expected, Southwest Airlines has pledged to "do better" as the second half of the busiest travel season evolved.
Southwest's on-time performance in June was just 62.4 percent according to USA Today and stood at 67 percent so far in July.
"We need to and we will do better than that moving forward,'' Southwest Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven said during the airline's quarterly earnings conference call on Thursday.
In the same months in summer 2019, when crowds were bigger, Southwest's on-time performance was 75.1 percent in June and 80.3 percent in July, respectively.
The airline said it wasn't a matter of having the appropriate levels of staff, but rather being caught short when the pent-up demand for travel exploded sooner than expected.
To address the situation, Van de Ven said Southwest in the short term is offering employees incentives to work on scheduled days off or is adding workers in several of its large cities.
"It was a bit messy as we throttled down our activity (last year), and it doesn't surprise me that it's a bit messy as we're accelerating it,'' Van de Ven said.
Van de Ven said the situation should continue to improve as summer storms "disappear'' and planes are less full as summer vacation season ends.
"That will give us more recovery options than we have today,'' he said. "I think we'll be better in August than we were in July. And hopefully, here by the end of the third quarter and the fourth quarter, we'll be back to where we wanted to be.''
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