Southwest Turns Quarterly Profit, Says Worst of Omicron Is Over

But Southwest said the Omicron variant will likely derail its previous expectation for a profitable start to 2022. The new variant has slowed both leisure and business travel, and Southwest expects that to reduce operating revenue by $330 million in January and February.

That’s another setback for airlines in the midst of an uneven recovery that has been marked by challenges.

“What we’ve experienced in 2021 is really humbling,” said

Gary Kelly,

in his final earnings call as Southwest’s chief executive officer before he steps down to become executive chairman. “I thought we would have this pandemic beat and behind us, and it’s far from that.”

Adding to the variant’s price tag, Southwest said staffing woes when many employees were out sick earlier this year—combined with bad weather—led to 5,600 flight cancellations so far in January. Southwest said about 5,000 employees tested positive for Covid-19 in the first three weeks of this month—about 2-and-1/2 times the number who became ill during the Delta wave.

Like other airlines, Southwest said bookings have started to recover—it expects to shake off Omicron’s impact and to stop losing money again in March. The airline said it still expects to be profitable in 2022 as a whole.

“The worst appears to be behind us, and we are optimistic about current bookings and revenue trends for March 2022,” said

Bob Jordan,

who is set to take over as CEO next week.

Rivals

American Airlines Group Inc.,

Delta Air Lines Inc.

DAL -1.08%

and

United Airlines Holdings Inc.

UAL -1.21%

all reported losses in recent weeks and said the Omicron variant had dimmed their prospects, at least temporarily.

Airlines including Southwest have been retooling to avoid the kind of snafus that dogged them last year, when carriers scrambled to rebuild their staffs and spool up operations to catch up with demand that accelerated more quickly than they had planned for.

Southwest offered incentive pay to many employees through early February to help stabilize its operation as Omicron ripped through its workforce—a move that will cost it an extra $150 million during the first quarter.

The airline is also aiming to hire at least 8,000 workers this year. To help attract and retain employees, it is raising starting pay to $17 an hour, after boosting its minimum hourly wage to $15 last year.

At the same time, Southwest is once again throttling back flying plans in the first half of this year to give itself more buffer to recover from unexpected events. While it previously planned for flying capacity this year to be higher than in 2019, when the pandemic began to decimate travel, Southwest’s 2022 capacity is now expected to be down 4% from that year.

The shift comes as Southwest girds itself for what may be another volatile year.

“Our approach in 2022 really is to accept that the environment we’re in currently might be the environment we’re in for a while,” said Chief Operating Officer

Mike Van de Ven.

The result will be higher expenses per seat mile the airline offers, a measure of unit costs. Southwest said it now expects such operating expenses, excluding fuel, to be 20% to 24% higher than in 2019, up from the company’s previous guidance of a 10% to 14% increase.

Southwest said it believes those expenses will ease after the first quarter as it restores the majority of its route network by the end of next year.

JetBlue Airways Corp.

JBLU 2.74%

, which on Thursday reported a fourth-quarter loss of $129 million, expects to lose money in the first quarter, but CEO

Robin Hayes

said he believes the worst of Omicron has passed. The airline said it needs to hire about 5,000 workers this year to make up for those who are leaving and to avoid problems like the ones it had when Omicron surged and it had to pay extra to ensure it had sufficient staffing.

“The way you do that is by being properly staffed so that you can support the level that you’re flying,” President

Joanna Geraghty

said. “Our training center is at max throughout, and it’s all about trying to get in position for the summer time-frame. We should be relatively well-situated as well for the spring break.”

Alaska Air Group Inc.

ALK 0.55%

also reported a fourth quarter profit of $18 million on Thursday. The airline said Omicron has resulted in a $160 million hit in the first quarter, but said bookings have started to recover.

Southwest posted quarterly profits throughout 2021 but until the final three months of the year, those results were boosted by government aid that covered airline workers’ salaries. Excluding one-time adjustments, Southwest reported a profit of $85 million in the fourth quarter.

The company’s adjusted earnings of 14 cents a share in the quarter compared with a loss of $1.29 a share a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were looking for adjusted earnings of 7 cents a share.

Write to Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com and Will Feuer at will.feuer@wsj.com