flensr

It is not insignificant that SWA alone never went into a negative cash position (cash on hand minus debts, without considering value of assets), and this has given SWA quite a bit of organizational flexibility that other companies may not feel at the moment. If SWA had received zero govt money, we'd still have had 10+ billion in cash and *might* have still had positive cash position without selling off any assets. Last numbers I saw, if SWA paid off all loans we'd still have $3B in cash, which is pretty close to how much we got in payrolls support grants. And the only downsizing we did (other than voluntary early retirements) was retire planes we only held onto in the first place because the MAX was grounded, and return some leased -700s. I don't think any other majors in the world were even close to being that well prepared for an economic disaster of this magnitude. Was that because of the LCC business model, or just a corporate culture that favored piling up a really fat rainy day fund in addition to stock buybacks during the previous economic boom?

There's a masters or PhD thesis in there somewhere, and I'm sure this will get studied for decades as the next chapter right after the lesson on the "Southwest effect" that all MBA students have to go through.