Workers Flood Stable Airline With Resumes

Dallas-based Southwest Airline, which might be the only major domestic airline to report a profit during 1991, has been swamped by applications from employees working at financially troubled competitors.

“We’ve had in influx of applications from people who think their airline has problems or who have been told there will probably be some furloughs,” said Southwest Vice President Ann Rhoades. During the past year, domestic airlines have laid off 44,000 employees, according to figures compiled by the Air Transport Assn., a Washington-based trade group. Layoffs have occurred at now-defunct Eastern, American Airlines, America West, Continental, USAir, Midway, Pan Am and Trans World Airlines.

More layoffs are likely because the domestic airline industry, which lost $4 billion during 1990, expects to lose another $1.3 billion during 1991.

Each time a competing airline announces losses or layoffs, Southwest is deluged with applications--often hand-delivered--from employees of competing airlines, Rhoades said. The airline has added a temporary employee at its Phoenix office to “talk to people and take applications as they walk in,” Rhoades said. “The mail-room people (in Dallas) are complaining . . . so you know it has to be pretty bad.”

The number of flight attendants who are submitting unsolicited resumes has jumped to 1,000 a month, up from an average of 250. The airline has seen a similar rush from applicants for ground jobs.

A record number of airline pilots also are submitting resumes to Southwest, which operates an extensive number of flights at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field. Southwest’s waiting list of pilots who are qualified to fly Boeing 737s--the only type of aircraft that Southwest flies--has jumped to nearly 500 in recent months, up from about 150 applicants.

And, because Southwest demands that pilots hold 737 “type ratings” before placing them on waiting lists, many pilots are spending their own time and money to gain required certificates. The certification process costs about $9,000, which often is “quite an amount” for pilots facing furloughs at financially troubled airlines, said Joe Marott, Southwest’s manager of training.

About 50 active pilots from competing airlines now are on a waiting list for training at Southwest’s Dallas-based training center. During recent weeks, the school has graduated pilots from USAir, America West and TWA, airlines that are experiencing serious financial troubles. Additional pilots are seeking 737 ratings at other privately owned pilot training schools around the country, Marott said.

Southwest’s training school is inundated with calls “every time an airline goes under . . . every time they start to quiver,” Marott said. The calls come from pilots who are “studying their options,” Marott said. Pilots who seek training to operate 737s hope to gain an inside track by attending Southwest’s training center. But the training is “at their (own) expense and with no guarantee that they’ll get a job,” Rhoades said. Pilots who are hired are brought into Southwest as co-pilots, Marott said.

Southwest, with about 9,600 employees, hired about 2,400 employees during the past year. About 1,000 of them were hired to fill new positions. The rest were hired to replace retirees or Southwest employees who left the company.

The airline remains profitable, but Southwest executives are hesitant to go on a hiring binge. “We’ve maintained the position that we won’t add people unless there’s a real necessity,” Rhoades said. “We don’t want to get in the position of having to lay people off.”