Despite a surprisingly good end of the year, the US low-cost airline Southwest is cutting its forecast for the current quarter.

The rapid spread of the omicron variant of the corona virus is slowing down the recovery in ticket demand, the company announced. Southwest Airlines is now cutting the flight offer for the first quarter of the year and expects to be in the red - like its biggest competitors. Because of the Omicron variant and bad weather, management expects losses for January and February. Although the business is expected to return profits in March, that's not enough for the entire quarter to be in the black, said Bob Jordan, who will become the new Southwest boss on February 1st. However, the remaining quarters and the full year 2022 should be profitable for the airline. In December, the management had also predicted a positive result for the start of the year.

The signs were still good for that. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Southwest also made a profit on government aid for the first time since the beginning of the corona pandemic. At $85 million, earnings adjusted for such items were also ahead of analysts' expectations. Overall, the company posted a profit of $2021 million in 977. Without the state aid of 2,7 billion dollars for salary payments, there would have been a high loss here.