Southwest Airlines Case Anaylsis - Essay Example

They lived up to their dreams since Southwest Airlines now ranks the fourth largest airliner that is operating under the logo LUV on NYSE in the united states of America. Rolling King and Herb Kelleher completed the necessary paperwork to create Air Southwest Co. the name by which the southwest airlines was known. Following the filing of approval by the two pioneers with the FAA, on 20th February, 1968 their plan to fly between the three Texas cities was approved by the Texas Aeronautical Commission.

Southwest continued to expand all through the 1980s and 1990s, and by 1993, it was operating between 34 cities in 15 states. This airline progressively expanded across the southwestern states into the northwest, the Midwest, and the state of California. Besides, it ventured into new destination in Florida and on the east coast. Owing to the low prices it offers it quickly conquered the markets share it explored. In fact; some competitors were forced to withdraw after Southwest Airlines entered their markets, allowing the company to expand faster than expected (David 1999).

For instance; when the Southwest Airlines ventured into California market (1990) it quickly scooped 20% of the intrastate market, sending a number of its competitors out of Los Angeles-San Francisco route, thus dominating the route. This happened because they were unable to contest the $59 one-way flight charges, with their $186 one way fare (Scholes 1999). In late 1994, United Airlines started to make a come back to the west coast routes. They tried to launch a low-cost, high-frequency shuttle services to no avail, because even a shuttle could not contest with southwest in a direct battle, as a result United Airline had to relocate its shuttle out of Southwest Airlines' routes and to some extent abandon some routes altogether (David 1999).

Nowadays a lot of people travel by plane, the airline industry has hence increased in service provision and even in scope specializing cargo and passenger planes. Southwest Airlines Company ventures in this industry in a unique way providing fairly low priced air transport in over 58 cities across the United States of America. Despite the September 11th terrorist attack, that caused a major blow to the airline industry, the Southwest Airlines Company still persisted when other airline corporations sunk into debts.

Based on the information on southwest airliners from News Week and Wall Street Journal, the corporation enjoys steady sales (David 1999). The major attribute for their unwavering success is their low-cost model and the knowledge by the competitors that the low prices of southwest are far from being matched. Therefore; by decreasing the prices even lower, the southwest airline corporation can push a company into bankruptcy (Scholes 1999). An outstanding objective of Southwest Airlines involves dedication to top-quality service delivery coupled with a sense of friendliness, person's dignity, hospitality, and company zeal.

Among the services the company provides are, short haul, point to point, high frequency, and low fare air transportation between 58 cities in the United States (David 1999). The organization of Southwest Airline Company adopts an upside-down pyramid where the senior management is at the base and