SouthWest airlines

**Southwest Airlines Co.**, typically referred to as **Southwest**, is one of the major airlines of the United States and the world's largest low-cost carrier. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has scheduled service to 121 destinations in the United States and 10 additional countries. As of 2018, Southwest carried more domestic passengers than any other United States airline.

The airline was established on March 15, 1967, by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King as **Air Southwest Co.** and adopted its current name, Southwest Airlines Co., in 1971, when it began operating as an intrastate airline wholly within the state of Texas, first flying between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. It began regional interstate service in 1979, expanding nationwide in the following decades. Southwest currently serves airports in 42 states and multiple Central American destinations.

Southwest's business model is distinct from other US airlines as it uses a rolling hub and point-to-point network and allows free checked baggage. It exclusively uses Boeing 737 jets in its fleet.

The airline has nearly 66,100 employees and operates about 4,000 departures a day during peak travel season.

As of 2021, Southwest scheduled flights to over 100 destinations in 42 states, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Southwest does not use the traditional hub-and-spoke system of other major airlines, preferring a point-to-point system combined with a rolling-hub model in its base cities.

As of December 2022, Southwest Airlines operates 771 aircraft. In its history, Southwest Airlines has operated only Boeing 737 jetliners, except from 1979 to 1980 and 1983 to 1985, when it leased and operated a few Boeing 727-200s. Southwest is the largest operator of the Boeing 737 worldwide. Using a single basic aircraft type allows Southwest pilots and flight attendants to crew any aircraft in the fleet without restrictions.

In March 2021, Southwest announced an order for 100 MAX 7 jets. The order established Southwest Airlines as the largest purchaser of the Boeing jet model. In June 2021, they increased their overall purchase order of Max 7 planes to 234 jets in total.

Southwest solely offers economy-class seats, and does not have business- or first-class cabins on its aircraft. Still, Southwest does offer many amenities, as follows:

The company permits two free-of-charge checked bags per passenger, and passengers are permitted to change their flight up to 10 minutes prior to their flights without extra charge. In the event of a cancellation, passengers are refunded a travel credit in the amount spent on their ticket, and the credit may be used toward other Southwest Airlines or Southwest Vacations purchase. The credit does not expire.

Southwest offers free in-flight nonalcoholic beverages and offers alcoholic beverages for sale for $6 to $7 per beverage. Free alcoholic drinks are offered on some holidays such as Valentine's Day and Halloween. They also have complimentary snacks on all flights. Southwest has become known for colorful boarding announcements and crews who sometimes burst out in song.

Prior to 2007, Southwest boarded passengers by grouping the passengers into three groups, labeled A, B and C. Passengers would line up at their specified letter and board.

In 2007, Southwest modified its boarding procedure by introducing a number. Each passenger receives a letter (A, B, or C) and a number 1 through 60. Passengers line up in numerical order within each letter group and choose any open seat on the aircraft. A 2012 study on the television series *MythBusters*, found this to be the fastest method currently in use for passengers to board a plane; on average, it is 10 minutes faster than the standard method. The airline was also number-one on the 2020 Airline Quality Rating list.

Southwest has a "customer of size" policy in which the cost of a second seat is refunded for any plus-sized travelers who take up more room than one seat.

### In-flight entertainment[edit]

All Southwest Airlines aircraft are equipped with Wi-Fi, along with free-of-charge streaming live television, movies, streaming music, and app messaging. After completing a testing phase that began in February 2009, Southwest announced on August 21, 2009, that it would begin rolling out in-flight Wi-Fi Internet connectivity via Global Eagle Entertainment's satellite-broadband-based product. Southwest began adding Wi-Fi to its aircraft in the first quarter of 2010. The airline began testing streaming live television in the summer of 2012 and video on demand in January 2013. As of November 1, 2018, live in-flight TV, movies, messaging (iMessage and WhatsApp) and real-time flight-tracking information via Wi-Fi became available to passengers, with full Internet access available at a fee for regular passengers.

Crashes:

On June 22, 2011, a March 25 recording was released to the press of an apparently inadvertent in-flight radio transmission of Southwest captain James Taylor conversing with his first officer. The conversation was peppered with obscenities directed at gay, overweight, and older flight attendants. According to Southwest, the pilot was reprimanded and temporarily suspended without pay and received diversity education before being reinstated.

On September 26, 2017, a woman was removed from a Southwest flight after claiming to have a life-threatening allergy to dogs, two of which were present on the aircraft, one being a certified service animal. Southwest employees requested that she provide documentation of her condition and staff asked her to exit the aircraft multiple times and police ultimately had to escort her away.

On December 29, 2017, a family was removed from a flight from Chicago Midway Airport because of an unconfirmed head lice accusation. The family did not have lice and was re-accommodated on a flight two days later.

In October 2019, a Southwest flight attendant filed a lawsuit against the airline, claiming that two pilots had livestreamed footage from a camera hidden in the plane's toilet to an iPad, and that one of the pilots said that such cameras were a "top-secret security measure" installed in all of the airline's 737-800 aircraft. Southwest and the pilot union stated that the film was a hoax and a "poor attempt at humor" by one of the pilots, previously recorded of himself on a different aircraft, fully clothed.

In February 2020, a report conducted by the DOT inspector general found that Southwest was flying airplanes with safety concerns and that the Federal Aviation Administration was failing to properly oversee the airline.

In 2020, a captain of a Southwest flight watched pornography on a laptop computer with his clothes removed while his female first officer continued her duties. The captain retired before the incident was reported, but he was subsequently prosecuted for lewd behavior, and the airline terminated his retirement benefits.

On May 23, 2021, a female passenger aboard a Southwest flight repeatedly punched a female flight attendant in the face after landing at San Diego International Airport, causing the attendant to lose two teeth. The passenger was subsequently charged with battery causing serious bodily injury.

Citing four whistleblowers, federal investigators with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel released a report on July 27, 2022, that follows up on the 2020 DOT inspector general's report. The 2022 report claims that Southwest stonewalled Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigations into maintenance and piloting safety lapses, and criticized the FAA for failing to adequately oversee the airline, stating that senior FAA staff "mismanaged and interfered" with investigations "in the face of SWA's intimidation tactics". The report accuses Southwest of misusing the FAA's Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) to hide pilot errors, while accusing the FAA of failing to adequately oversee Southwest's mechanics, and of failing to adequately vet maintenance records provided by the airline for 49 737 aircraft purchased from foreign carriers whose documentation practices did not meet FAA standards.

### December 2022 scheduling crisis[edit]

Main article: 2022 Southwest Airlines scheduling crisis

The airline experienced severe delays and thousands of flight cancellations starting on December 21, 2022, and continuing through the Christmas holiday. While some cancellations were due to bad weather from the severe late December winter storm across much of the United States, industry experts and SWAPA also blamed inadequate staffing and the airline's "outdated" employee scheduling system, citing reports of pilots waiting on hold on the telephone for up to eight hours awaiting work assignments. On December 26, the airline initiated a massive system "reset", preemptively canceling thousands of flights and halting ticket sales over concerns that travelers might buy tickets for flights that are subsequently canceled. Federal officials criticized the airline and U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced a formal investigation. Some experts attributed the crisis to the lack of scheduling flexibility inherent in the airline's point-to-point operations model. Paul Krugman in *The New York Times* suggested the turmoil was not as much about corporate greed as some might expect and noted that despite an increasingly digitalized world, "there's a lot of physical action, and real-world labor, going on behind the scenes." Another writer on the paper's opinion pages, Elizabeth Spiers, said this was an example of the airlines knowing they are offering passengers a poor deal but that many people have little choice given the alternatives. The airline said it expected the problems to hurt its Q4 2022 financial results.

Amenites/food:

The following snack and drink offerings are available on flights 176 miles or more:

* Complimentary snacks (if you’re flying between Hawaii and the continental U.S., you’ll have even more snacks to choose from)
* Complimentary non-alcoholic drinks
* Alcoholic drinks1 at prices ranging from $6-7

Flights traveling 175 miles or less will only have water available.

Links:

Southwest Airlineshttps://www.southwest.com