Southwest Airlines

The LUV (NYSE) airlines as it is mostly known as, Southwest Airlines evolved the airline industry in America by successfully maintaining its Low Cost Airline model for quite a long time. The case study commences with Anna Rhoades, Vice President of people (HR Dept.) of Southwest airlines going through her brief prepared for her next day’s company’s top nine executive were to be a part of this meeting and its agenda was to discuss the threats and challenges the airlines were facing against some of the actions by United and Continental Airlines.

On june18,1971 Southwest airlines laid their headquarters foundation at Love Field, Dallas. At starting they only had 3 Boeing 747 flying across the Texas cities of Houston,Dallas and San Antonio. The company still woks on the same operating style which it has been using since begining,the style of focussing on flying to under-utilized airports which are in vicinity to metropolitan areas. Due to its shortest turnaround time i.e. 15 minutes the flights are on time. The companies fare policy is very simple and have a constant fare across the same state. The main cost the company retrieves is due the high productivity of workforce . A single agent manages the gate and a ground crew of whereas its competitors have 3 agents and 12 ground crews for the same work. Work of Flight Attendant and Pilot is to help clean the Aircraft and help passengers check in at the gate. It has put its Heart and soul so much into customer services so much that it has made it win The Triple Crown Twenty Four times and Annual Triple Crown Award 3 times.

The company is 89% unionized and is very employee centric and it is a dream for everyone to work in such airline. CEO Herber Keller is a labour relation expert is a very People centric person. He ensures that the employees enjoy there work. The management style seems to be relaxed and focus is paid to employee celebrations like birthdays and anniversaries. The Hr. department is very