Southwest Airlines

Sin Ho Man

20052982

MGMT 3110 L1

Case Report: Southwest Airlines

1. What is SWA’s competitive strategy? What does it take to execute the competitive strategy?

The SWA has adopted ‘Cost Leadership’ as its competitive advantage. And it has achieved low cost through numerous ways.

To commence with, the Southwest workforce routinely turn around an aircraft in only 15 minutes and its gates are manned by a single agent and have a ground crew of six or fewer, which are much lower than other airlines. In other words, the SWA needs less employees to handle its flight but each employee can serve more customers, compared with other airlines.

Also, SWA emphasized point-to-point routes and the use of less congested airports in order to improve the efficiency of flight operation and maintain high levels of aircraft utilization. Southwest pilots spend more time in the air than pilots in other airlines. At meantime, SWA only flies fuel-efficient Boeing 737s and this single type of aircraft allowed SWA to save on maintenance and pilot training costs.

Besides, the frequent flyer system of SWA advocates simplicity as it is based on the number of trips flown, instead of the mileage. As such, it requires nearly no effort or cost for SWA to keep track of mileage of frequent flyers.

Lastly, SWA has never sold interline connection to other carriers so as not to pay to be part of other airlines’ reservation systems.

Sin Ho Man

20052982

2. Analyze SWA’s human resource management system. How does this system link to the execution of its competitive strategy?

The Human resources management system in SWA mainly comprises of two divisions, namely recruiting and training.

In terms of recruiting, Southwest is extremely selective. As the corporate culture and operation of Southwest has great emphasis on teamwork and positive attitude of employees, so peers and other employees are often involved interviewing new staff so as to better screen for the Southwest Spirit. Also, as a move to...