The outwardly bland (but interiorly stunning) building is home to Southwest’s new Network Operations Control center (NOC), a 48,600-square-foot high-tech habitation bathed in soothing blue light. Here as many as 256 men and women at a time can sit or stand in front of computer screens, monitoring the workings of the United States’ largest domestic airline.
About one in every four airline travelers taking a domestic US flight today board a Southwest 737 of one flavor or another. More by-the-numbers insights as to just how large the airline’s become. It lofts approximately 3,600 flights daily to 96 destinations in 41 states – as well as DC, Puerto Rico and a number of “near-international” countries.
The structurally hardened (able to withstand an EF-3 tornado) facility gathers under one acoustically-tuned roof virtually all the disciplines necessary to run an airline of Southwest’s rank. NOC operates under the theory that by bringing together all the carrier’s key players – flight dispatchers, maintenance, pilot and flight attendant scheduling, chief pilots, air traffic control specialists, meteorologists and customer service folks – they can more effectively communicate. The idea is to make better decisions. Those decisions directly affect the lives and fortunes of its 100-million fliers each year.
Business Passenger Push
A significant slice of those fliers are business travelers. To entice ever-greater numbers of them, over the past few years Southwest has rolled out a slew of new products – even though a separate business class cabin and advance seat selection are not among them.
First, there’s Business Select. Racking up more Rapid Rewards points gets you on board the plane first so you can get the seat you want. You also get more overhead bin space and a “premium” drink. In a move that reflects the flight path of commercial aviation in general in this country, spokesman Dan Landson says, “we’re seeing business customers are purchasing more advanced purchase fares.”
On-board WiFi underscores how Southwest is trying to keep things simple, despite its growing reach. Satellite-based WiFi connectivity and video-on-demand DISH TV are dished not to an installed seatback screen, but to your personal device – laptop, tablet or smartphone. The Southwest 737 in which you fly has got to be fitted with WiFi to receive DISH.
Like the rest of the industry, Southwest’s fares aren’t as low nowadays as they were. Landson pegs this to fuel prices. “In the past few years, our company has grown 27 percent in size and become a multi-national airline, and our fuel bill is up about 70 percent in the same time frame.” Still he contends, “we remain the only airline (that can count history in decades) still flying without filing for bankruptcy. We are able to do this by not nickel-and-diming customers.”
While charging for earlier access to the airplane via Business Select and EarlyBird check-in, Southwest doesn’t charge change fees and continues to promote its wildly-popular Bags Fly Free product. The net result of all this is to maintain the airline’s perception as a price-leader – even though its fares aren’t as felicitous as they were once upon a time.
International Initiatives
Right now Southwest is taking a few properly-measured baby steps in inaugurating service outside the US proper, taking over some of merger partner AirTran’s routes to Aruba, Montego Bay and Nassau.
By the end of 2014 the last AirTran flight will have pushed back into history and all the remaining carriers’ international service will be flown by Southwest’s Canyon Blue 737s to destinations such as Cancun, Mexico City, Los Cabos and Punta Cana.
It may not be until 2015 that we see Southwest lay on a full-court press as far as Western Hemispheric international flights. That’s when Houston Hobby, Southwest’s fifth-largest focus city (the airline still shies away from the term “hub’) intends to finish work on a $156-million, five-gate international terminal. After that happens look for the carrier to launch flights from HOU to the Caribbean, Mexico and select cities arrayed atop the northern reaches of South America.
Dear Old Dallas
While Houston is important, it’s Southwest’s north Texas home, Dallas Love Field, that’s got everyone’s attention just now. Come this autumn, the last vestiges of the competitively-restrictive Wright Amendment fall away, enabling nonstop flights on full-size jets to lots of new destinations.
As of October 13 there will be new nonstop Southwest service to Baltimore/Washington, Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando and Chicago Midway. On board November 2 are new nonstops out of Dallas to Atlanta, Nashville, Reagan Washington National, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles International, New York LaGuardia, Phoenix, San Diego, Orange County and Tampa.
It’s Washington Reagan, LaGuardia and Los Angeles that matter most, prime business destinations frequented by fliers who tend to reside in upscale north Dallas. Often, they live closer to Love than DFW.
Safety First
Overlooked by some amid the AirTran integration, the new international flights and the unfettering of Love Field is this: Southwest is a startling safe airline.
The numbers are persuasive. Southwest’s Boeing 737s average some six flights a day, racking up about ten hours, 43 minutes of flight time. They engage in comparatively high-frequency, high-cycle (one takeoff and landing comprise a single cycle) flying. Some airlines carry a large percentage of their passengers in long-duration, over-ocean flights where there may be but two take-off and landing cycles per day. It is precisely in the critical takeoff and landing phases of flight – especially the latter – that accidents tend to cluster. That’s what makes Southwest’s safety record all that much more remarkable. The airline makes lots of takeoffs and landings per day.
To understand how important the carrier’s one and only safety-related fatality is, consider that over the first 42 years of its 43-year existence, the period for which we have complete numbers, Southwest transported some 1.7 billion revenue (paying) passengers. During the same timeframe it made 23.9 million trips.
The carrier’s safety culture is rooted in a pervasive, persistent sense of what constitutes the common good. “It started out, really, many years ago when [co-founder] Herb Keller was chairman,” says Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University safety professor Bill Waldock. “His philosophy was that everybody is a part of safety, that if you were a part of the Southwest family, you had responsibilities to the rest of the family” to shepherd the airline’s safety, tend to the common good.
Sounds hokey, perhaps. But if you’ve spent as much time as this reporter has covering Southwest, getting to know its people, Kelleher’s statement is perfectly plausible. Southwest Airlines employees may not always take themselves seriously. Consider their often-irreverent pre-flight announcements such as, “In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, put your oxygen mask on first. Then put a mask on your child – or someone who’s acting like a child.” The employees do, however, take their jobs exceedingly seriously.
It’s no accident, then, that Southwest Airlines has risen to the heights it has.
