Southwest Airlines Meltdown
In the 1990s, I did a lot of work-related flying, much of it on Southwest. This wasn't because I preferred it, but because the corporate travel departments put me on discount carriers. At the time, though, its corporate attitude was fun, a lot like the famous Volkswagen ad campaigns of the 1960s. For instance, While peanuts are now a snack, they once stood for how frugal the airline was: other airlines served meals while Southwest served just peanuts. Some Southwest executives felt they would need to increase their investment in inflight food. Then-CEO Herb Kelleher shot that down, “Do you know what the difference in cost is between peanuts and Snickers?” For several years, I commuted to various job assignments in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Sacramento via Southwest and even became familiar with a few of the crews. One flight attendant, who simply followed then-corporate policy of encouraging individual expression, would sing on the PA a ditty whose first line was, ...