Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle pulled no punches at a Wall Street conference this week, calling workers who didn’t want to return to the workplace “lazy” while confirming his already amenity-spare airline will cut costs to accommodate an economic slowdown.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley 11th. Annual Laguna Conference in New York City on September 12, Biffle took direct aim at workers who favor remote work over showing up at the workplace.
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“We got lazy in covid. I mean seriously, people are still allowing people to work from home. All this silliness, right?” Biffle told the audience. “All that’s out the window.”
Fully in-person, on-site work is trending downward after the global pandemic and resulting lockdowns and even c-suite executives believe it’s never going back to the days of full office capacity.
In 2018, 91.6% of U.S. workers showed up for fully in-person work according to the most recent Survey of Business Uncertainty, which is co-operated by the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University. Each month, the surveys senior executives at approximately 500 U.S. businesses across multiple industries and regions.
In 2023, that percent of workers showing up at the office fell to 75.7% in 2023, and executives expect that figure to drop to 72.6% by 2028, the report stated.
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To Biffle, a shorter head count on the job leads to lower company productivity.
“When we look at overhead versus 2019 adjusted for capacity, it’s up dramatically,” Biffle noted. “Why do I have more people per plane in overhead than I had in 2019? It’s because they’re not as productive.”
Frontier Group Holdings, Inc. is having a tough year financially, as demand for low-fare, low-frills air travel wanes. The company’s stock is down 45.7% on a year-to-date basis and the stock was just downgraded by T.D. Cowen.
Biffle says Frontier will “double down” on cost-cutting to better compete in a tighter U.S. air travel economy that’s not too keen on flying domestically these days.
“Look, we’re not alone in this,” he told the Morgan Stanley audience. “You hear every company out there talking about productivity challenges.”
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