Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines, once known as Air Southwest Co. became incorporated in 1967. It wasn’t until 1971 when Lamar Muse joined the company that they became known as Southwest Airlines. June of 1971 was when Southwest first began to fly with their destinations limited to Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. There were six round-trip flights a day between Dallas and San Antonio with twelve round-trip flights a day between Dallas and Houston. In 1979, Southwest expanded their footprint to more than the state of Texas. Over the years, Southwest has continued to implement new technology, change policies, change aircraft, and focus on their customer base, which has helped them be one of the leading successful carriers in the low-cost carrier fleet, competing mainly with Airtran, Frontier, and JetBlue. Most recently, Southwest merged with AirTran, which allows Southwest, for the first time in history, to rival with airlines such as Delta. Southwest will not only expand their domestic network but they will for the first time venture into international travel with AirTran’s services to the Caribbean and Mexico. They believe between the two companies, they will fly more than 100 million passengers a year. Southwest is making every effort to be the first truly national low-cost carrier, to have a domestic route network that is as comprehensive as the legacy network carriers (www.usatoday.com).

Corporate Culture Leveraging Competitive Advantage

Southwest mission statement says: “The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit” (www.southwest.com). Cul’ture: the development, improvement, and refinement of the originality, individuality, identity, and personality of a given people (www.southwest.com). It’s all about working hard and playing harder.

The corporate culture at Southwest Airlines can be defined within three...