The older I get, the more I appreciate that. I’m proud to be a part of Southwest Airlines. And I think the world is up to the task here.Īs you’ve faced this crisis over the last year and a half, have you had much time to think about your role as a steward over this brand and what you’ve been able to accomplish? It will be just like putting a man on the moon 52 years ago - it will require government investment and focus. It’ll be messy coming out of this pandemic as well. It’s just not going to be instant gratification, and I think that was the main thing that I had to come to grips with and I had to convince the rest of the company was that we are in uncharted waters, we’re going to take one step at a time and we’re going to do everything we can to preserve people’s jobs.Īnd you fast forward now 14 months later and we accomplished that. We had so much momentum coming into 2020 that there was just very strong and widely held belief that our world will defeat this pandemic and ‘this too shall pass.’ And you make your to-do list and you believe that we’re going to get through this. So you quickly come to grips with the fact that we’ve got stuff to do. How can this be happening? Certainly no fault of ours, no fault of any company in the United States for that matter, around the world. And I distinctly remember when the traffic started plunging, there was a despair and it was disbelief. The first thing is, I just have to admit is that they were very dark days. Lamar Muse (Southwest’s first president) deserves a lot of credit for getting the airline started, but I think Herb and Colleen very much deserved credit for establishing the culture in the way that we know it today, continuing to build on what was started in 1971. Even after he retired in 2008, he continued to be a very significant and visible presence around Southwest. But he was CEO for 20 years and then chairman for 30 years. Herb was a co-founder, he was the general counsel and he was in legal battles to get the airline launched back in 1971. So they weren’t here, in that sense, in the very beginning, but they were very involved from the very beginning. Herb wasn’t the first CEO and Colleen wasn’t an employee until the late ’70s. There’s a real appreciation for the history of the company and the people who built it. When you ask about reflecting on the 50th, you think about our ancestors and the people who started the airline, the original employees and what they had to do. They deserve the lion’s share of the credit for that. You could tell they were investing effort to make the flying experience a pleasant one. They seemed very happy and loved to hear jokes. With the open seating and a very informal ticketing process, the employees just had personality they were very friendly. In the late ’70s, I traveled a lot in my job and traveled on other airlines besides Southwest. In those days, the experience just felt so different from other airlines. You mentioned that quirky attitude and Southwest, despite being the largest domestic airline, still has that underdog mentality. A Southwest Airlines flight attendant models the iconic hot pants uniform that the crews used to wear. I remember there were two flight attendants in hot pants, and back then we all probably thought it was a lot of fun and had a lot of personality, but honestly, I didn’t know if this airline would survive. There was me and two other kids going to Rice (University in Houston) for a college visit. So my first trip was about a year after Southwest started. I flew as a college recruit from San Antonio to Houston. My first flight in my life was on Southwest in the fall of 1972.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |