The mother of all low-cost carriers got its start as a triangle scrawled on a bar napkin. The corners represented San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston—the three cities to be connected by Southwest.
Rollin King presented this picture to Herb Kelleher in 1967, and Kelleher quit his law job and began defending Southwest against the airlines threatened by the very idea of Southwest. The single state airline, which wasn’t tied up in any federal regulation, had the potential to offer low fares, a business tactic James Fallows wrote about in “The Great Texas Airline War,” our first piece covering Southwest in 1975. (He correctly noted that the fate of Southwest would preview the fate of American airlines after deregulation.)
Flying point-to-point was one of the main innovations of Southwest. That and keeping costs really, really low. Tickets were cheap because there was no food on flights, no seat assignments, no classes—as contributing editor Jan Jarboe Russell wrote in 1989, “everyone was treated the same.” Southwest didn’t charge cancellation fees, or bag fees, and they had quick turnaround times, so that two years after its first flight, Southwest’s flight schedule, as senior editor S. C. Gwyne wrote in 2012, “began to resemble a bus schedule.”
What Southwest lacked in frills, it made up for in spunk. As Colleen Barrett, Bill Kelleher’s longtime secretary and the president of Southwest from 2001 to 2008, toldTexas Monthly in 2003, “To make up for the advertising we couldn’t afford, we decided we were going to be fun, zesty, and a little irreverent to generate a buzz.” The models for their first ads were their “big haired flight attendants,” who, Russell wrote, “look like they went to the same West Texas high school.” Once on board, the flight attendants would strip down into red-and-orange hot pants and go-go boots. They sang songs, cracked jokes, and seduced clients with their Texas friendliness. When Southwest could finally afford advertising they gave their account to Austin-based GSD&M, a group of wild UT graduates flying by the seat of their pants and the fire of their imagination.
In the early days Southwest only hired one percent of all applicants, and “managers used such things as the humor test to weed out candidates,” Gwynne wrote. “Prospective pilots were sometimes asked to change into Southwest shorts during their interviews; if they weren’t good sports they weren’t hired.” Southwest attributes its success to its unconventional values: employees first, passengers second, shareholders third.
In the 2000s, Southwest profited from fuel hedging and was one of the only airlines to avoid bankruptcy. Southwest acquired AirTrans in 2010, adding 8,000 employees to their 35,000. Despite several union disputes surrounding the merge, Southwest Airlines remains one of the most consistently profitable carriers. They are the largest low-cost domestic airline, and, in terms of customers carried as of 2011, the largest airline period.
The longtime CEO is stepping down. With apologies to Herb Kelleher, it's Kelly who may be the most successful chief executive in the company’s history.
The Southwest Airlines cofounder was a pioneering entrepreneur who changed the way we travel. He was also a world-class wit, a bon vivant, and a not-so-closet intellectual.
Flight attendants go viral with comedy routines, official Twitter accounts go viral with porn, and emergency landings ahoy. What's going on in the skies?
The Dallas-based retailer alerted customers that hackers stole as many as 1.1 million credit and debit card numbers, a much larger figure than previous thought.
America's leading death-care provider, based in Houston, charges 42% more for its traditional funeral services; Torchy's taco is suing the Texas Taco Company; bags might not fly free at Southwest; and more.
Francesca Mari is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine who writes about housing, inequality, and abuses of power. She worked at Texas Monthly from 2012 to 2016.
A naturally large-chested woman in a sundress didn't feel the "LUV" from Southwest when a gate agent dubbed her cleavage-revealing outfit "inappropriate."
Houston Hobby is set to become an international airport after the Houston City Council voted to allow Southwest to build an international terminal to fly to Latin America.
The senior editor on understanding Southwest Airline’s culture, hearing jokes about plane crashes from a flight attendant, and making a business story interesting to the average reader.
Somehow, as every other major airline went bankrupt, slashed its workforce, or grounded planes, Southwest Airlines kept flying high. Today, Southwest is the country’s largest domestic carrier. So how does a feisty underdog vanquish its competitors and dominate a thoroughly beleaguered industry? One Kick Tail-a-Gram at a time.
I hate flying. I don’t mean that I’m a legitimate, doctor-approved aerophobe who munches Xanax like candy and lunges for the barf bag at the first sign of turbulence. I just dislike the minor ordeal of air travel—the security lines, the required partial disrobing and unpacking, the “huddled masses”
Passengers snapped pictures and took video of a pair of Magellanic penguins toddling down an airplane's aisle on a recent flight from Orlando to New York.
“If a shoe factory closes in Seattle, you can’t move it to San Antonio and have it competing there within a couple of hours, but with airplanes you can. I’ve always said that I want us to strike with the speed and alacrity of a puma.”
Evan Smith is the cofounder of the Texas Tribune, a senior adviser at Emerson Collective, and the former editor in chief and president of Texas Monthly.
For 28 years Herb Kelleher has run Southwest Airlines as a low-cost, short-haul carrier that’s fun to fly on and even more fun to work for. But there could be changes on the horizon.
