As travelers and airline workers reel from mass flight cancellations, a corporate watchdog noted Wednesday that Southwest Airlines spent nearly $6 billion on stock buybacks in the years ahead of the coronavirus pandemic instead of spending that money on technological improvements that unions have been demanding for years.
According to Accountable.US, the crisis Southwest has experienced in recent days amid a massive winter storm was "a problem of its own making," noting that the airline opted "to spend $5.6 billion on stock buybacks in the three years leading up to the pandemic rather than making investments in infrastructure to be better prepared for extreme weather events like this week."
