Southwest

Question 3 : Reason for the eroding operational performance at Baltimore and issues that require action :

1. Volume of connecting passengers and their impact on station performance and on the customer’s experience : connections are in average 20 percent overall but in Baltimore, it is around 30 percent. It at times leads to increase the turnaround time from 15 mintues(expected) to 30 minutes.

2. Continued growth in number of flights but the infrastructure not ready to support the same. E.g bag sorting area has reached its capacity already. The gates would reach the capacity limits in 2001 end. 7 more flights are expected to be added in October.

3. Challenges in employee retention : average tenure for BWI is 27 months as compared to the overall average of 75 months in Sothwest.

4. Unskilled new staff : half of the employees working in Customer service or on the ramp were in Sothwest for less than one year. As Doug pointed that it takes time to develop the coordination between the teams (apart from getting trained), we can infer that the efficiency of the staff at BWI is way limited till now.

5. Lack of motivation : Some of the employees are doing mandatory overtime , including some 16 hours of work daily. This leads to un-satisfaction of the employees plus inefficiency too due to the very high percent hours overtime.

6. Under-staffing : Baltimore station is 179 short of the normal staff with 80 staff shorter in ramp alone.

Question 4 : Things that recommend Matt Hafner should do:

1. Hiring more staff with good skills to reduce the load of the local staff at BWI.

2. Transfer of experienced staff from other regions for some time till the time the local staff gets accustomed to the culture of Southwest.

3. More motivation techniques should be used to inculcate the employee satisfaction (it has been said in the case that many employees are losing morale). Employee retention should be kept in mind because hiring again and...