Southwest Airlines ( Luv )

Southwest Airlines Co., established in 1971 by Rollin King and Herb Kelleher, began its operations with only three Boeing 737 aircrafts. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas(Hawkins, Misra, & Tang, 2012). Southwest is well known as one of the largest low-cost carriers. With this strategy, the company has dramatically grown up and deeply rooted in the US airline industry. Now, Southwest Airlines Co. operates 633 aircrafts to 93 domestic cities and the highest number of passengers used Southwest Airlines to fly around U.S in Jan 2014 (Hawkins, Misra, & Tang, 2012). To accomplish more than 40th consecutive years of both profitability and competitiveness, Southwest Airlines Company is constantly trying to find the routes to differentiate itself from other domestic carriers (Hawkins, Misra, & Tang, 2012).

In 2010, Southwest Airlines purchased AirTran Airlines and received all the issues that come along with enormous overnight growth. This came in the form of inconsistent price and seat availability, confusing reward systems, delayed flights and very upset customers (McCartney, 2013). This

Southwest Airlines is a major US airline established in 1967 that services a multitude of cities in all 50 states and beyond. The company is known for its outstanding quality in providing services and it 's cost effective ticket prices to its many passengers throughout the nation. This airline is based in the southwestern United States, in the city of Dallas Texas, and due to the tremendous number of airplanes that it has and the timely service that it provides to its passengers, this airline services more US passengers than any other airline. This airline also has the largest fleet of planes of any economical or low-cost airline service in the world and employees more than 45,000.

Southwest's competitive advantage in providing low cost is of the primary reasons which their competitors couldn’t match. The airline has the lowest costs on a per mile basis among all the major airlines as they used single aircraft type and the highly efficient, high-frequency ad point-to-point route scheme. Due to this commoditization of the industry, passenger profiles have changed with business and first class seat demand in great decline. This correlates perfectly with Southwest's position of no assigned seats or class designations. Competing companies have been forced to introduce low fare options in attempts to regain lost market share from low priced air carriers. Because Southwest's strategy has always been low cost, and standardized travel, they have not had to change strategy. This has saved them what could amount to millions on restructuring costs. Also, some of the competitors tried to increase no of flights which resulted in operational ineffectiveness

Southwest Airlines has been in business for more than thirty years. Presently, operating airplanes and flight services is very competitive, and in most cases, is not cost-effective industry; however, Southwest Airlines has been consistently profitable company, which is successfully designed with the intention of achieving high growth. According to an interview of Southwest Airlines former CEO, Herb Kelleher, when he visited Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, despite all airline industry challenges, the “low-fare airline has grown into the third largest in the world as measured by the number of passengers carried, and the largest with destinations exclusively in the United States” (2006). To the customers, Southwest

Southwest Airlines Co. began its operations in 1971 and has been serving the industry for the past 43 years now (Southwest Airlines, n.d.). It is the major domestic airline, and ranked number one in 2014 by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (United States Department of Transportation, 2014). Back in 1971 the airline began its services in Texas in the cities of Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas. The company has been ranked as the nation's largest low cost carrier (Mergent, 2012). It offers the lowest fares, and has the lowest cost structure in the industry.

Due to high demand and success of this strategy, the airline has made the strategic decision to invest in bigger planes that will have a higher capacity of passengers. This idea was introduced in 2012 by CEO Gary Kelly and called this strategy a (2013) “game changer” with the intentions to ultimately increase profits. In July 2014, Southwest Airlines decided to jump into the international airline travel into Mexico and the Caribbean using the acquisition that took place with AirTran in 2010. This expansion, however, is still in its early stages and has yet to show full financial results.

Southwest Airlines is known as a low cost service in the industry. Southwest Airlines has created a reputation that is built on high quality of service at low costs. By keeping their own costs low Southwest Airlines is able to pass those savings onto consumers. This creates a unique opportunity which Southwest Airlines has created for themselves. This is an area which was created by Southwest Airlines and will serve to continue as a self created opportunity as Southwest Airlines makes its way into the international market. This has a lot of do with the fact that Southwest treats the current cost of flight as overfares. Overfare is the airline way of saying that a seat is over priced. In Charisse Jones's article 'Southwest Announces First International Flights' she quotes, “"Most of these routes are overfared,'' Bob Jordan, Southwest's executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said during the news conference. "It's a very substantial opportunity for Southwest Airlines. ... It's a big, big component of our growth strategy'”. As Bob Jordan says routes are overpriced. This is an ideal opportunity for Southwest Airlines to come in and fill in gap by creation. Southwest Airlines is own to be a low cost airline and since they have modeled themselves as such this is a self created opportunity in order for them to seize this gap in the international

Southwest Airline Company, a major US airline was founded by Rolling King and Herb Kelleher. It commenced its operations in 1971 with three Boeing 737 aircrafts as an intrastate airline covering three Texas cities viz. Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

Southwest Airlines began from a modest humble beginning, a small airline company servicing mainly secondary airports rather than high-traffic airports. Southwest Airlines made its mark like the common worker climbing from the bottom of the industry through the ranks to become a major competitive force in the domestic segment of the U.S. airline industry. It had weathered industry downturns, dramatic increases in the prices of jet fuel, cataclysmic falloffs in airline traffic due to terrorist attacks and economy- wide recessions, and fare wars and other attempts by rivals to undercut its business, all the while adding more and more flights to more and more airports. (coursehero 2016) Since 2000, the number of passengers flying Southwest Airlines had increased by more than about 42 million annually, whereas the number of passenger traffic on domestic routes declined for carriers like Delta, American Airlines, Continental, United, and US Airways.

Southwest Airlines was introduced in Texas on June 18, 1971 with three Boeing 737 airplanes and only serving three cities of Texas which included Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. The company came a long way since 1971; today Southwest Airlines has 537 Boeing 737 airplanes and serving 68 cities around the US. Southwest Airlines has become a major airline in 1989 when it hit the billion-dollar revenue mark. Southwest Airlines is the United States’ most successful airline due to the low fares, high frequency, and

Southwest Airlines is a well-respected leader within the airline industry internationally and domestically due to the friendly, reliable and friendly

Acquiring Morris Air and Muse Air in 1980’s Southwest emerged as one of the market leader in the American domestic aviation industry.[2]

Since the late of last century, the business model of low cost airline represented by Southwest Airlines has been spreading all over the world, has influence and changed the framework and development of the world airline industry.

Southwest Airlines Company (Southwest Airlines or ‘the Company’ SWA) is a passenger airline that provides scheduled passenger and freight transportation services. The Company primarily provides scheduled services throughout the US and near-international markets. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and employs 48,000 people and serves over one hundred million customers annually (“Southwest,” 2015). Southwest Airlines has accumulated over forty years of revenue and is one of the supremely flown airlines in the United States of America (Dess, et al, 2014, p. C137). Recognized for dominating the national or domestic airline market, Southwest Airlines’ diligence has built an