Major Airline Delivers The Bad News
We’re not out of this mess yet.
In a recent regulatory filing, Southwest Airlines has just noted that the likely new surge in COVID-19 cases is hampering new airline bookings once again!
According to Fox Business, Southwest admitted that it has “experienced a deceleration in close-in bookings and an increase in close-in trip cancellations” for the first few weeks of August.
Furthermore, they said the decline in business is likely “believed to be driven by the recent rise in COVID-19 cases associated with the Delta variant.”
“Based on the assumption that COVID-19 cases remain elevated in the near-term and current revenue trends in August continue into September, the Company’s current outlook for third quarter 2021 operating revenues has worsened by an estimated three to four points from its previous outlook three weeks ago, compared with third quarter 2019,” the filing said.
While Southwest is the only major airline to report these new findings, its safe to assume this issue is going on industry-wide and will likely continue until President Biden figures out a way to defeat this pandemic.
