When I don’t know how to talk about something, I go to etymology to help crystallize my thoughts. I find the history of how we define words offers me an interesting perspective about whatever I’m facing in that moment.
The etymology of the word ‘identity’ is simple: sameness. That element or version of you that remains the same no matter what. Your approach to the world. How you view things. Your identity can govern decisions you make, goals you have, or how you treat your own legacy.
On July 25, 2024, Southwest Airlines threw away its identity, its legacy. A proud brand was cast aside as executives lusted for the attention of greedy investors and, in so doing, traded beauty for ashes.
How bad do I think it is? Total. I’ll go as far as to predict that in 10 years, Southwest Airlines will no longer exist.
What Southwest Airlines Forgot
Southwest Airlines famously started as a drawing on a napkin at the St. Anthony’s Club in San Antonio, Texas. Herb Kelleher and Rollin King envisioned an airline that would make flying fun while charging far less than the competition. Most of you probably know that story, but it’s how they planned to charge less than the competition that underpinned the plan. Air Southwest (as it was originally called) would only be flying within Texas and therefore not be beholden to the Civil Aeronautics Board, which controlled all fares for airlines that flew between states.
In other words, Southwest was presented with a problem (how to charge lower fares) and came up with a unique and crazy-sounding solution (just fly within Texas). Their idea was so good that basically every other airline that touched Texas sued to prevent them from ever flying.
A few years later, the renamed Southwest Airlines finally took flight, surviving with scant cash reserves in a large part due to their attorney betting on the airline and waiving his legal fees in all of those lawsuits (the attorney’s name: Herb Kelleher). Southwest was presented with a problem (how to exist) and came up with a crazy solution (co-founder was their attorney).
When Intercontinental Airport opened in Houston in 1969, airlines vacated William P Hobby Airport, which closed down. Two years later, Southwest realized there was opportunity in what others gave up on and they moved back into Hobby Airport, charting their own path and creating their own market to dominate, likely for much smaller fees than at Intercontinental too.
Or there was the time when airlines at Greater Southwest Airport in Fort Worth, Texas, and Love Field in Dallas, Texas, agreed to move their services to the planned new Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in 1974. One airline, Southwest, that operated at Love Field decided not to move, because they didn’t technically exist when the agreement was made to move to DFW Airport. Again, they were sued. Again, they won. Southwest charted their own path, not worried about what the competition did. And they still fly from Love Field today, only minutes from downtown Dallas.
In a way, it should have never worked, but it did. It worked because Southwest focused on its strengths. Southwest focused on what made it unique. Southwest’s identity, its sameness, was the fun rebel whose slogan was “The Somebody Else Up There Who Loves You”.
But now it’s gone. With one simple, misguided, forsaken decision.
Andy, you’re overreacting, it’s just assigned seats, don’t most customers want that anyway?
No, I’m not, and no, it’s not just assigned seats.
Southwest always had simple, easy-to-understand fares. You could only find them in one place, southwest.com. To speed up boarding times and reduce airplane turn times, Southwest bucked the trend of the day and offered free checked bags with all tickets. Look past that though, and look at how each of those embraced one of Southwest’s strengths.
- Simple fares: easy for customers to understand and easy for Southwest reservation agents to explain
- Selling airfares only on their own website: a repeatable, predictable customer experience
- Free checked bags: set themselves apart from the rest of the industry while saving time and turning planes around faster
Southwest’s model was always incredibly simple, which is what made it so effective. They did things their way. They focused on what they were good at. Fast airplane turns, fleet simplicity, and employees encouraged to have fun.
That’s gone.
Here’s the point
Southwest is now just another airline. They caved to pressure from their investors and Wall Street analysts. Instead of focusing on their strengths, Southwest listened to a spreadsheet and focused too much on their weaknesses. Focusing only on fixing weaknesses doesn’t get you to excellence, it gets you to mediocrity. There has to be something that sets you apart, otherwise you just sort of blend in.
Southwest used to be bad at blending in because their identity, their ‘sameness’, was being different.
Now it’s a new sameness. Aspiring to be the same as American, Delta, and United, three airlines that struggle defining who they are. The only connection those airlines have with their customers is through their loyalty programs, which is kind of like buying lunch for all the cool kids in the cafeteria just so you could sit with them.
Southwest is forsaking their biggest strength: the connection with their customers.
Breaking Down the Loveless Statement from Bob Jordan
As part of Southwest’s Big Announcement, which the stock market greeted with a whopping 2% increase in share price a few days after the announcement (as of this writing at least), there was a statement from Southwest Airlines President, CEO, & Vice Chairman of the Board Bob Jordan:
Although our unique open seating model has been a part of Southwest Airlines since our inception, our thoughtful and extensive research makes it clear this is the right choice—at the right time—for our Customers, our People, and our Shareholders. We are excited to incorporate Customer and Employee feedback to design a unique experience that only Southwest can deliver. We have been building purposefully to this change as part of a comprehensive upgrade to the Southwest experience as we focus on Customer expectations – and it will unlock new sources of revenue consistent with our laser focus on delivering improved financial performance.
What a depressing statement. “Don’t worry, we promise to design a unique experience” doesn’t sound like something Southwest would say. And oof, look at the word choice on the last sentence. “as we focus on Customer expectations” sounds great, until you get to “unlock new sources of revenue consistent with our laser focus on delivering improved financial performance.”
Great job Bob, it took you only four words to tell the world that Customer expectations don’t matter as much as new sources of revenue. I guess Somebody Else Up There Who Loves You could be changed to Somebody Else Up There Who Unlocks New Revenue Sources if you’re looking for a new slogan.
Herb Kelleher famously said that the airline’s primary customers were its own People, the thought being if you took care of your own People well enough they would naturally take care of the airline’s retail customers with the same spirit. In one sentence, on the biggest day in the airline’s history, Southwest Airlines CEO etc etc Bob Jordan said revenue matters more.
Ok, listen, I get it.
Airlines are a ruthless and cutthroat business. The word ‘business’ is important, because we all have to remember that businesses exist to provide a service that people will pay a price for that makes enough money for that business to sustain itself. Southwest has struggled with that at times. To be fair, so have the Big Three airlines that Southwest is now planning to emulate.
Maybe I’m just being nostalgic and cynical, but I think there’s room for businesses that do the Same Great Thing over and over again. Maybe their earnings won’t break records but simply making a stable profit needs to be ok again. Be Great, make a fair amount of money, provide great jobs for people, make customers happy, and go home.
But Southwest doesn’t want to do the Same Great Thing over and over again anymore. Instead of focusing on the Customer experience, it chose the laser focus on shareholders (most of whom, it needs to be said, probably do not fly Southwest).
Southwest chose the path of perpetual growth that makes it the same as everyone else, and they’ll never be able to go back.
Someday soon, within 10 years is my bet, Southwest will merge with another airline and soon be the same unrecognizable, dull airline like every other one in the skies. On that day, someone will look back on the story of the proud little airline that started from a napkin and took on the aviation world, compare it to whatever version of Southwest still remains, and ask a simple question…
“where’s the love?”
I’ve been a long time flyer with southwest. My Rapid Rewards number is only 8 digits long. I have remained a loyal flyer because of the uniqueness of the airline. In addition they do seem to care about their customers. Unfortunitly, when people learn to circumvent the goodnaturedness of things that are simple, the good for all goes out the window. The Southwest mirical flyers have ruined the purity of the boarding system. I have been on recent flights where over 30 people boarded before the A group. On that same flight, I only witnessed 4 people using wheel chair services as they exited the plane. It’s alway frustrating when new rules have to be put in place to stop the cheaters. It destroys the goodness in the workplace. I think there were better ways to solve this problem, but it really did need to be solved. In my case alone, I’ve flown twice as many American Airlines flights this year at the expense of Southwest because I didn’t want the aggravation at the boarding area. Thanks for the change Southwest.
I appreciate you sharing your perspective.
Welcome to the world of a publicly traded company. At some point, it’s almost always an end-game race to put profit above all else, leading to decisions that may look good in the short term but ultimately end up distilling strong brands.
I mean profit is no doubt the ticket to entry, but it’s just the lack of imagination that frustrates me so much. Southwest will not be as good at being an average airline as the current average airlines are.
Very well written Andy and I whole heartedly agree. Rather than finding unique ways to make more money, SWA has decided to forsake its brand and go for the same way others are making money.
IMHO, Southwest needed to look at its pricing structure. Their rates are much higher than the competition, closer to departure. Perhaps they could’ve tinkered with the algorithmn more there to fill more seats aggressively? As opposed to starting to charge for seats etc.
Also IMO, the big three’s boarding processes are no better than cattle calls (with very little sense or structure). Just look at the lines to board United planes, they are more insane than SWA’s
Well everyone loves a good story. One the Napkin is folklore. Herb publicly said many times over years it was Rollins fire side story that he told to future investors to lure new investors to Southwest Airlines and as the folklore grew like all things Southwest it became a fun loving marketing opportunity to promote WN Legacy. Open seating was created by Lamar Muse its first CEO who made the decision because WN was almost broke And it was cheaper to buy the bare bones version of the Braniff cowboy reservations system without the extra cost for training its employees. In addition WN couldn’t afford all of its first 4 aircraft so they had to sell one to make payroll and keep the company alive. This invented the “10 min turn” which was another do or die moment in WN history to operate the same flight schedule with fewer aircraft to generate enough revenue to stay in business. But WN has evaluated switching to seats assignment to increase revenue many times over its history. The first real evaluation was when Southwest Bought MuseAir and changed the name to TranStar airlines. It had seat assignments and a Business Class section. Unfortunately it was the late 80’s and Fuel was expensive, the TranStar McDonald Douglas MD 80 aircraft were more expensive to operate with a high fuel burn than the 737-200. With Deregulation in full swing and merger mania happening in the industry WN was successfully able to make several Horse trade agreements to get used 737-200 in exchange for WN now shuttered MD80 aircraft.
After 9/11 WN again seriously Evaluated switching to assigned seats since the rules and regulations from the new TSA requirements they use Southwest aircraft in groups of 30 with plastic boarding passes obsolete.
WN did weeks of research in SAN testing different boarding methods including assigning seats but ultimately deciding to go with the first version of A/B/C boarding groups because it wouldn’t require expensive training costs as WN was already starting to evaluate getting and new reservations systems in the near future.
With the industry evolving and new LCC like JetBlue and AirTran upgrading their game . WN saw it’s business pax revenues
Declining year over year. So after Testing a newly enhanced board as a short term solution until WN finishes its review on buying a completely new reservation System. WN came up with the A/B/C 1-30/31-60. But the business pax were still not returning to WN because they didn’t want to be hassled with waiting to check in 24hrs in advance for Boarding pass. So WN reworked the 2nd addition of the new A/B/C boarding group to include Business select A1-A15. They also added early bird check in an upgrade product to grab extra revenue to get boarding assignments 36 hrs in advance.
WN also Bought AirTran at that time and seriously considered switching to seats assignments with the same type of big front seat AirTran offered.
But ultimately they found out AirTran reservation system was just like Southwest reservation system it was equally outdated and needed to be replaced in the near future. So to reduce cost WN shelved the switch to seat Assignments until a new replacement reservation system could be purchased a.k.a. Amadeus. But PreCovid they were doing good travel was having a high demand period but WN was already seeing the upsell to Business select an earlybird boarding starting to drastically lose money and I knew something had to change. Then Covid hit and changed everything. Post Covid saw the demand for BS and EB drop further and the Trend of Buy cheap and just asking for pre boarding save seats for your friends and family in C group. The “TikTok generation called it Gaming the Southwest system” . And since there is now way to enforce ADA regulations without putting your self up for potential lawsuits . And With WN seeing pre boarding numbers triple system wide it also saw the BS and EB upgrades
Plummeting drastically and people are now avoiding flying WN because of the Pre boarding problem so it basically had no other option than to finale the switch to bring back a more level playing field. The Long time repeat loyal Customs have be asking for an Even more leg room seats and the pre boarding fix in record numbers
I appreciate this comment, packed with good info!
I started reading, skeptical I would agree with the position of the title. I ended up being persuaded, and I’m in agreement with you.
I know it took a lot to say that.
I loved their orginalness that drove the traditional airlines crazy. That Southwest DID NOT consider the traditional airlines as competition. The car was their competition.
Low cost carriers came and went (including sub fleets, remember United’s TED?).
That uniqueness has sadly been eroding for quite some time, as they’ve moved from their original models to more of a low cast leisure airline that while bringing in new customers, highlighted weaknesses in their model that was chipped away by the MBA’s and their spreadsheets.
All these defenders are butthurt because they have been trying to convince everyone and their mother that Southwest seating and boarding protocol is superior to legacies.