On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) said airline executives should be brought before congressional hearings due to the fact that the airlines still cut their workforce despite receiving billions from taxpayers, and in the case of Southwest Airlines, received $7 billion from taxpayers and issued dividends to stockholders while failing to improve their technology.
Malliotakis stated, “There should definitely be hearings and we should definitely bring in these airlines in and find out what is going on. They did get — in this case, Southwest got $7 billion, and there [were] tens of billions that went out to all the airlines to keep them afloat and they still furloughed employees. They did not choose to upgrade their system there for scheduling, and that is what created a lot of the headache that you’re seeing now. And as a matter of fact, I think what’s really frustrating is the taxpayers foot the bill, $7 billion, and then they decide that they’re going to issue dividends to their stockholders instead of making those necessary improvements to make sure that they can keep these flights on schedule and avoid these types of cancellations.”
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