Southwest Airlines made a huge announcement that will make Southwest Employees extremely happy 

This is not only a story about the airline company itself but also about the culture. Can you even imagine what it’s like to be the Southwest Airline’s CEO and Chairman like Gary Kelly. Your company is facing challenging years to think that it has more Boeing 737 MAX Aircraft than any other existing U.S airline. However, they are all sitting idle right now and off the schedule until April.

Your revenue has been down from the previous year. And yet now, it’s the right time to spread the announcement regarding the annual profit-sharing with employees. How will you decide? What would be your approach?

This airline company announced that it will be sharing at least $667 million to its employees as part of its profit-sharing plan for the year 2019. It will commensurate to a 12.2% bonus and more than six weeks’ pay for every qualified employee of Southwest Airlines. Besides, it has a 22.6% increase over the $544 million that the airline had shared the previous year. This marked the 47th profit-sharing year in a row for Southwest Airlines.

But this does not happen in a vacuum. To start it all, the airline previously released a statement regarding their deal with Boeing which covers about $125 million to share with employees this is because several Southwest’s planes were grounded. Without this deal, this year’s profit-sharing amount would be essentially small. Happening at the same time as this is the on-going labor contract negotiations. Southwest Airlines make this announcement right after one of its big competitors, Delta Air Lines announced its profit-sharing that reached $1.6 billion. Delta Air Lines has about 20,000 more employees than Southwest Airlines.

In line with the recent announcements, the two other huge U.S. carriers namely United Airlines and American Airlines also announced profit-sharing figures at $419 million and $213 million respectively.

Now, it’s difficult to notice the order in which the size of a certain airline profit-sharing program is ranked: Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and American Airlines. That exact order is also listed in the recent Wall Street Journal ranking of the best and worst airlines in the United States. Delta ranked first followed by Southwest Airlines which tied with its smaller competitor Alaska Airlines. United Airlines is on the 8th spot followed by American Airlines.