AIR INTERNATIONAL: Most airlines have been playing defence during the coronavirus pandemic. Relatively early on, Southwest Airlines defied this by playing offense, with aggressive additions to its route network. What motivated that pivot from triage to expansion? What was the timeline? Andrew Watterson: That was around the second wave of COVID-19, because we had the spring and then different models for how things might unfold. Our original plan was [to be] roughly full strength by the end of the year. But we moved our network around so that we were exposed to locations like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Nashville - places that had business and leisure. And when the second wave came, the seriousness and the length of time was obvious to us, so we needed a new plan. From previous downturns [we knew] demand in each market was going to be subdued for a while. Therefore, no matter what the pace of recovery, it would be insufficient to have the same amount of capacity in the same markets we had pre-COVID-19.
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