Southwest was flooded by applications for just 750 flight attendant openings.
Ten thousand people applied for 750 openings to work as flight attendants for Southwest Airlines in just two hours and five minutes, the airline says.
Applications were accepted last week, the first time the airline hired flight attendants from outside the company since 2011, according to Bloomberg.
"Of course anytime we do it, it's like opening up the floodgates," CEO Gary Kelly said in a recorded message for employees.
The global airline industry is on pace to see record profits in 2014. Full-time employment by U.S. carriers has not risen accordingly, but its rate of decline is slowing.
Data from the U.S. DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows the number of full-time employees in the U.S. airline industry dropped .8% between October 2012 and October 2013, the smallest decline since September 2012.
Most low-cost carriers reported an increase in full-time employees, but Southwest reported a 2% drop (to a total of 45,074).
For the first six months, Southwest's new flight attendants will earn $22.36 per trip, a spokesperson for the airline said. A trip is about 55 minutes of flight time, and attendants usually fly at least 72 trips per month.
(Alex Davies - Business Insider)
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