MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH SOUTHWEST AIRLINES THIS WEEK:

Let’s start out with three things:

1. I’ve always been a huge fan of Southwest Airlines (SWA), since its early days and even as recently as a few days ago. I even bought SWA stock today to show my support.
2. My comments and opinions are my own, not reflective of the company I work for
3. I’m one of many very upset people about what SWA did to its customers, even more upset that all the warning signs were there, we just didn’t know it.

?Why Southwest?

Remember the bar napkin with the three cities on it, showing how SWA could travel between three cities picking up and dropping off people quickly, efficiently, and cheaply???What a great concept!?But even better was who SWA competed against:?Not other airlines, but with other forms of transportation. ??Be it train, car, bus, etc.?SWA strived to create a great experience with LUV, that differentiated itself from every other form of transportation.??From the original concept to today, that should always be what the company is rooted in and it should not change.??Because of SWA’s focus on creating a better experience, millions of air travelers have become raving fans of the airline, including myself.??Let’s not forget that SWA’s marketing has been brilliant and its employees have all worked very hard to stay true to its founders and original mission.?I’m certainly not an expert on air travel, planning, and coordination, but I have been traveling for decades on every major airline in the US.?I was not only drawn to SWA because of the great culture, but the other airlines pushed me away at the same time with their ridiculous baggage fees, boarding processes, and choking policies.??

?What changed?

As SWA continued to grow, it became harder and harder to keep the culture and systems scaled and consistent, we all know the stories of both passengers and crew that “had enough” and lost composure for one reason or another.??99.99% of the time it seemed to be passengers, not crew.??But during this time, did leadership double down and reinforce what makes “the worlds largest point-to-point carrier” such a great airline??Most importantly did SWA’s leadership INVEST in software and hardware to support its rapid growth? ?You be the judge.?In my opinion, as your business grows you have to work HARDER to maintain the culture and its systems, it's simple math (more employees, more locations, more opportunities for the culture to slip, more opportunities for systems to fail).??Through it all, the flight attendants, pilots, and ground crew worked very hard to keep smiling.?Good for them!??Ever notice that SWA seemed to favor opening airports in the southern part of the US in the beginning??Weather was more predictable as the company expands.??Start opening northern cities and things become less predictable, especially with a point-to-point model.

?What just happened?

I can tell you first hand, because my family and I experienced the series of cascading failures this week:??A complete breakdown of systems that have been band-aided for too long.??SWA’s app crashed, website crashed, the customer service number either hung up on your or you waited for hours on the phone.??Their customer service agents worked heroically, but they were exhausted and didn’t know what to tell us as customers.??We saw families, and teenagers (by themselves) experiencing cancellations and no idea what to do next.?It was heartbreaking.?In ABQ, we witnessed the Albuquerque Police standby near the customer service desk, prepared for a customer to lose their minds over this.?Our family had to rent multiple cars and drive in the dead of night for 7-8 hours at a time, falling asleep at the wheel, just to make it to the next big city to catch that flight, only to be cancelled again.??Imagine what would have happened if any family got into an accident because of this episode and people were injured? Just imagine that for a moment.

?Who’s running the ship??

Bob Jordan – CEO (and maybe President on Jan 1, 2023).??He is “a 34 year Southwest veteran” and has held basically every management and executive role in the company.?Take a look at his profile at swamedia.com and you’ll see words like “people, culture, communication” etc.?Andrew Watterson- COO, only been in the job for a few months, but let’s not forget that he was VP of Network Planning and Performance for the past 9 years at SWA, and before that he worked for Hawaiian Airlines as VP of Planning and Revenue Management.???The list goes on, quite an impressive group of airline executives.

What needs to happen now?

What happened is not an existential threat to SWA if handled properly.

1. Call every CEO of every airline right now, including the regional and private carriers.??Ask for every empty seat they have, no matter the cost.??Get your customers and their luggage home now.
2. Apologize and don’t stop apologizing.?Get it out on social media right now, run ads on TV, anywhere that you can reach your customers and sincerely tell them that you are sorry.??Don’t blame the weather, every airline deals with weather.?Don’t blame the internet, the cloud, sunspots, the FAA.??Just apologize.??Acknowledge the heartache and stress this failure caused.??You should have seen the panic, tears, fatigue, that we witnessed.
3. Make good on your promise to set things right.??Make it VERY easy for customers to get reimbursement for their rental cars, hotels, meals, gas, etc.?Don’t haggle or argue.??You’re going to take a charge to earnings this quarter, might as well get the financial pain out of the way.
4. Invest in the best planning systems, including possibly changing the point to point model, now.??No doubt you’ve been looking at systems for many years.??Make the investment, don’t hesitate.??Most importantly keep your customers updated on the progress of these new systems and how it will keep “Airmaggedon” from happening again.

?Bob, Mike, Andrew and the rest of the leadership team: This time around your competition (car, train, bus) beat you at your own game.?Its up to you to set this right and win back your customers (and I’m betting your employees are pretty upset with you right now). They won’t forget this for a while.??Make it right, fix your back end systems quickly, and keep saying you are very, very sorry!

Thanks all for letting me get this off my chest.