Activist investor says Southwest Airlines is underperforming

The airline's had a bumpy ride since multitudes of passengers were stranded by bad weather and an aged computer system.

Just in time for peak summer air travel season, an activist investment firm is pressuring Southwest Airlines. Elliott Investment Management said Monday that it’s taken a nearly $2 billion stake in the carrier.

​“Southwest’s rigid commitment to a decades-old approach has inhibited its ability to compete in the modern airline industry,” Elliott said in a statement.

The firm argues there’s room for improvement at the airline, the country’s fourth-largest by revenue.

One thing Southwest had going for it in the not-too-distant past, said Naveen Eluru, a transportation researcher at the University of Central Florida, is that it “enjoyed a patronage, if you would, of customer loyalty.”

But in December 2022, bad weather and antiquated scheduling software caused the airline to cancel more than 16,000 flights and strand millions.

“When you can’t get to your vacation for your holidays, all that loyalty is ruined,” Eluru said. “I mean, I used to travel Southwest, but now I also hesitate to buy a ticket.”

Customers departed for other carriers. Since then they’ve been coming back, gradually.

“I flew on Southwest this morning, and happy to report it was on time and it was a full flight,” said Nicholas Rupp, an economics professor at East Carolina University.

He said Southwest has made some unusual business decisions.

“One way Southwest helps keep costs down is only having Boeing aircraft. That way, their pilots can only need to be trained in one aircraft type,” he said.

But relying on one supplier for your most important assets is also risky. Boeing was supposed to deliver dozens of 737s this year. So far, it hasn’t.

Plus, “the 737 doesn’t lend itself to long-haul international flying, for example, to Europe or into deep South America or to Asia,” said Henry Harteveldt, an airline analyst with Atmosphere Research Group.

Adding other aircraft models to its fleet could help Southwest compete on new routes. But Harteveldt said it would be tough to turn the proverbial plane around overnight.

“The airline industry is not like other industries. It still has a lot of government regulation,” he said, on things like aircraft maintenance and staffing levels.

So Harteveldt said Southwest could hit turbulence en route to boosting its prospects.