Southwest offer a wide array of professional opportunities through internal training programs, and they encourage employees to extend their knowledge through external training engagements in their respective fields.

They have enhanced Leadership courses to include sustainability content. In these courses, they discuss sustainability, their fuel usage and its impact on their greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, their initiatives to decrease emissions, and their recycling programs. Annual environmental training for operational groups that includes storm water pollution prevention, proper waste disposal, air permit compliance and aircraft drinking water compliance are also provided to employees.

In 2014, they collaborated with Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois, and its aviation maintenance department, where they donated actual aviation equipment so their students could acquire hands-on experience and become better prepared to enter the airline industry. This collaboration has led to an increase of Lewis University graduates working at their maintenance facility base at Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW).