Southwest Airlines expects the strike by Boeing workers to once again limit the number of aircraft it receives next year, despite a lengthy push to boost production.
“It’s too early to tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised if our deliveries from Boeing in 2025 are lower than we originally thought,” Southwest chief executive officer Bob Jordan said in an interview on November 13. The carrier expects a “more conservative number” of planes than “Boeing thinks they can deliver right now,” he said.
Delays at Boeing, including a production slowdown after a door-sized panel blew off an airborne 737 Max plane in January, forced Southwest to repeatedly cut the number of planes it expected to receive this year, settling at 20 jets.
Southwest’s order book with Boeing had originally called for 86 aircraft deliveries in 2025, but the airline has since lowered that number to 73.
The carrier’s planning factored in a strike of four to five weeks, Jordan said. But the walkout lasted longer — more than seven weeks — and Southwest estimates the planemaker will need 30 to 60 days to return to normal assembly rates. Jordan said he expects Boeing’s production constraints to persist through next year.
“There’s a number at which, if Boeing goes below that, we’ll have to rethink our capacity,” he said.
Southwest plans to increase flying by just 1% to 2% in each of the next three years under a series of operational changes to update its one-size-fits-all business model and turn around lagging financial results.
Despite that slowdown, the airline will continue receiving new planes set for delivery through 2031.
“We are going to take take every single aircraft in the order book because there is a lot of value,” Jordan said. “To the extent we don’t need them, we will sell older aircraft into the market.”
