Essay: Analysis of Southwest Airlines

The paper will elaborate on Southwest Airlines, its strategy, the reasons behind its success and a critical review of the kind of plan it should chalk out for future.

South West Airlines has been running for the past twelve years and is reputed to be one of the best there is in North America. Southwest was initially named as Air Southwest Co. by Rollin King and Herb Kelleher who were the co-founders of the airlines. It was in 1968, did they file for their approval with the FAA for their plan to fly between three cities. From there on, especially the 1980s and the 1990s, did the airline started expanding its bases and quickly in the Southwest, Midwest and Northwest. Soon Florida was also added. In most of these places, South West Airlines, enjoyed success on a larger than predicted scale. Local airlines were inevitably abandoned by the natives there and SWA chosen over for its incredibly cheap airfares. It gave a good run for money to the likes of American airways and US Airways. Most of them had to track routes, which SWA was not taking, but found little progress even there.  Today, it is the fourth-last domestic carrier, speaking in terms of the number of customers that board on it. The airline has come a long way, transforming itself from a regional operator in Dallas to a national carrier. At the end of 2002, SWA was serving 58 cities in 30 states and was operating a whooping 2800 flights a day. It enjoys revenue of 45.4 billion RPMs and even more astonishing is its thirtieth year in a row of profitable operations.  It was apparently the only profitable US airline in 2002. It enjoys good standing amongst its customers for its on time performance, on-time performance, best baggage handling, and fewest customer complaints.