Southwest Airlines makes yet another leadership shakeup | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

If one airline has been through the wringer over the last few years, it’s Southwest Airlines (LUV) .

In the summer of 2023, hedge fund Elliot Investment Management bought enough of the airline’s shares to order company votes and meetings and started calling for major changes to the airline’s leadership and business model.

While CEO Bob Jordan was able to hang onto his role, the Dallas-based carrier gave in to wider reforms such as cutting 15% of its workforce, pushing out former executives Gary Kelly and Ryan Green, and shaking up its board with six appointees of Elliott’s choosing.

In cost-cutting changes that sparked the ire of many longtime customers, Southwest also scrapped popular perks like its two-bags-fly-free allowance and replaced open seating with assigned seats like most major airlines.

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Southwest announces new board chairman, previous one cited ‘additional time commitments’

In yet another series of change to its board and governance structure, Southwest announced that it has appointed Doug Brooks to be its new independent board director chairman starting from Aug. 1. Existing chairman Rakesh Gangwal has stepped down “due to additional time commitments unrelated to Southwest.”

Gangwal will continue to sit on the board as a regular member while Southwest is also committing to forming a new “Fleet Oversight Committee” to oversee its strategy for acquiring new aircraft.

“The transformation of Southwest Airlines is well underway,” Gangwal said in a statement on the chairman change while also praising the airline for having “the courage and conviction to fundamentally change ingrained aspects of their business model.” “[…] I am pleased with the current trajectory and traction of the Company and delighted that Doug will lead the Board and continue to build on the transformation underway.”

As incoming chairman, Brooks said he is “deeply honored to serve Southwest in this new leadership position during this evolutionary time in the Company’s history,” while Jordan praised him as a “decisive leader” with “a proven track record of creating shareholder value.”

Southwest Airlines has faced multiple financial struggles over the last five years.

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Amid quarterly losses and industry-wide problems, Southwest still struggles to find its financial footing

Brooks has served on the Southwest board since 2010 when he arrived from a background of leading the Brinker International restaurant portfolio.

Southwest has struggled to find its financial footing since the Covid pandemic, reporting a long string of quarterly losses.

On July 23, Southwest said it now expects its full-year revenue to fall somewhere between $600 and $800 million, rather than the previously-estimated $1.7 billion; shares of the airline immediately sank by more than 11% as a result.

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Even with some of the cost-cutting changes introduced by the start of 2025, Southwest has seen its numbers hit by lower travel demand and both domestic and international consumer confidence amid the Trump administration’s haphazard approach to tariffs.

While fuel costs have been down, delays in deliveries of the Boeing (BA) aircraft it ordered also limited the types of routes Southwest could run to bring in profit throughout much of the year.

“Amid the current macroeconomic uncertainty, it is difficult to forecast given recent and short-lived booking trends,” Southwest wrote in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the spring.