Founded by Herbert Kelleher in 1971, the concept of Southwest Airlines was first described by Texas businessman Rollin King on a cocktail napkin in a San Antonio, Texas restaurant several years before.
The secret to the wildly successful history of Southwest Airlines has been from the beginning the company’s ability to dare to be different. Low fares were offered to passengers by eliminating unneeded services. Southwest eschewed the “hub-and-spoke” style of route scheduling that many other airlines engage in by building traffic in secondary airports like Albany, Chicago-Midway, (instead of O’Hare) and Orange County.
Some of Southwest’s other innovations were a ten-minute turnaround time, stewardesses wearing short-shorts (hot pants), and a free bottle of alcohol included with each ticket. Southwest today provides more than 2,300 flights each day to 52 cities in 26 US states. Their fleets of 280 Boeing 737 aircraft are fuel-efficient which lowers maintenance costs and reduces the cost of pilot training.
While Kelleher was CEO Southwest also developed an unusual corporate college, due to Kelleher’s colorful personality. As a result it was well-known that although Southwest employees may have taken themselves lightly—sometimes actually singing their on-board announcements to the tune of popular songs—they took their jobs quite seriously. Southwest Airlines has never experienced any in-flight deaths. Fortune Magazine consistently calls Southwest one of the US’s five “Most Admired Corporations” in its annual poll.
Related Links: