Southwest Airlines customer service goes completely remotely, reservation centers close
A traveler walks past a Southwest Airlines plane while taxiing from a street at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on October 11, 2021 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty pictures
Southwest Airlines’ customer service agents will soon work ̵[ads1]6;100%’ externally when the airline moves to close the reservation centers.
“Southwest Airlines has just announced that it will close all reservation centers and switch to 100% teleworking,” said the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union representing the airline’s customer service agents, in a note to members dated Wednesday.
The shift will take effect on September 1, Southwest said, although the airline added that most reservation agents have worked remotely throughout the pandemic. It has more than 3,200 customer service and reservation agents based in Albuquerque, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Oklahoma City, Phoenix and at Southwest Headquarters in Dallas.
Their main task is to help travelers with reservations and travel changes.
The union said in its memo that Southwest made the decision without input from the union. The organization did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.
The closures make Southwest the latest company to consider whether office work is necessary, efficient and attractive to workers in a post-pandemic culture. Southwest and other airlines are striving to hire new employees as travel demand roars back after a two-year Covid decline.
“Developing a fully external workforce provides increased flexibility, both in attracting and hiring new employees from across the country, and in planning current employees who have worked record-efficiently in an external work environment,” Southwest said in a statement. .
Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines are still staffing reservation centers. A spokesman for Delta said the airline has no plans to change that. Spokesmen for the other airlines did not immediately comment on whether they plan to make a similar change to Southwest’s.
