Southwest CEO: Masks should be required everywhere. Like pants.

• Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said on Thursday that masks should be required in public as part of an effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
• After modest improvements in demand in May and June, Southwest has seen travel demand as COVID-19 case numbers spike across the US.
• Kelly said that demand will likely remain low until there's a vaccine or treatment, but that universal mask usage could help accelerate the reopening — and let people get back to flying.

Free country or not, you can't stroll about naked in public. Clothing — whatever your style — is mandatory.

The same rules (and societal norms) should apply to masks, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said during a CNBC appearance on Thursday.

"I have no problem with a mask mandate, I just don't think that it should think that it should be only for air travel," Kelly said in response to a question about whether the federal government should mandate masks on airplanes and in airports.

"Let's mandate masks. I mean, you have to wear pants, why can't we mandate that you have to wear a mask in a pandemic?"

After plummeting early in the spring, travel demand showed a modest resurgence in May and June. But as COVID-19 cases have spiked in states across the US in recent weeks and some states have imposed quarantine restrictions, it's gone right back down.

"We were encouraged by improvements in May and June leisure passenger traffic trends, compared with March and April; however, the improving trends in revenue and bookings have recently stalled in July with the rise in COVID-19 cases," Kelly said in a Thursday press release announcing the earnings. "We expect air travel demand to remain depressed until a vaccine or therapeutics are available to combat the infection and spread of COVID-19."

Southwest posted a $915 million loss for the second quarter, down from $741 million in net income for the same quarter in 2019. Revenue was down 83% year-over-year, to just over $1 billion.

"The issue then becomes, where can you go? What can you do when you get there? Are you required to quarantine? Is Disneyland open? And all of those things," Kelly said on CNBC. "I think until we get out of this pandemic, you're going to see very few events or large gatherings, that's going to hurt travel. You're going to have quarantines in certain places at times, and then you're just going to have general concerns about getting out and about."

Even if airlines do everything they can to improve safety on board their planes, Kelly said, demand won't return to something approaching normal until all the places people like to go can fully reopen.

"If people would wear the mask — please wear the mask — we can defeat this pandemic," Kelly said. "The United States is obviously an outlier right now. We need to be doing what other countries have been successfully doing around the world in terms of crushing these cases."