If you’ve traveled by plane anytime recently, you may have noticed an interesting phenomenon at the airport.
While most airline check-in lines have a sparse to solid number of customers in them, the lines at Southwest Airlines are huge. Overflowing.
There are people everywhere, and Southwest employees have to direct human traffic to get everyone checked in on time. (We Spectator staff members who went to Phoenix witnessed this firsthand).
Sure, it’s hectic, but here’s the bottom line: in the midst of an economy that’s not exactly at its best, Southwest is one company that’s actually doing extraordinarily well, with a net income of $99 million.
There are a number of good reasons for this. What other airline hires flight attendants who sing “Happy Birthday” to you? Or tell jokes during takeoff and landing?
Those reasons, of course, aren’t enough to make anyone choose Southwest over another airline. But there’s more to it than that.
One of the biggest reasons is the simple fact that Southwest, unlike other airlines these days, doesn’t charge its customers to check their bags. That, and they’re just downright affordable, with regular online deals and overall low costs for flights.
There’s a name for this, believe it or not: it’s called—naturally—the Southwest effect.
Southwest treats its employees well (hence their encouraged, genuine cheerfulness and good humor), and keeps its fares low, even when other airlines are going bankrupt or merging their services.
This is not a Southwest advertisement. This is simply a suggestion to other companies that have been hard hit financially.
Their model wouldn’t work for every company—such as those that make, say, grand pianos or sell expensive jewelry—but for the mass-production companies, taking a peek at Southwest might be an opportunity for growth.
Besides the obvious difficulties that come with an economic crisis (such as, you know, the financial problems) there’s a definite psychological change that comes to those involved.
We’re short on cash, so we become cynical and distrusting of anyone in authority,especially the rich ones.
Why not? As businesses lose money, costs start going up, so we pay more with less money, and our financial anxiety only gets worse.
But Southwest has made the effort to keep their prices low and their employees smiling (but not in that fake, creepy way—we like to think their cheerfulness is actually sincere.) This year, while other companies around the country tanked, Southwest made a tidy profit.
It’s not about denial of hard times; it’s about putting your chin up, having fun and being kind no matter what.
Kudos, Southwest. We’re glad that someone is doing it right.
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