Quotes & Sayings About Southwest Airlines

Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air. — Herb Kelleher

Also, in the category of 'obvious but still shocking,' an animal called a 'killer whale' killed someone who was trying to play with it. Now, no one knows exactly what enraged the whale, but earlier in the week, it had been thrown off a flight by Southwest Airlines. — Bill Maher

Southwest Airlines is successful because the company understands it's a customer service company. It also happens to be an airline. — Harvey MacKay

The first involves streamlining operations and introducing cost innovations from manufacturing to distribution. Can the product's or service's raw materials be replaced by unconventional, less expensive ones - such as switching from metal to plastic or shifting a call center from the UK to Bangalore? Can high-cost, low-value-added activities in your value chain be significantly eliminated, reduced, or outsourced? Can the physical location of your product or service be shifted from prime real estate locations to lower-cost locations, as The Home Depot, IKEA, and Walmart have done in retail or Southwest Airlines has done by shifting from major to secondary airports? Can you truncate the number of parts or steps used in production by shifting the way things are made, as Ford did by introducing the assembly line? Can you digitize activities to reduce costs? By — W.Chan Kim

I guess the worst moment I ever had in business was the fear that Southwest Airlines wouldn't get off the ground. — Herb Kelleher

The spirit of Southwest Airlines is exuberant, it's caring, it's dedicated, it's diligent, it's fun, it's rewarding, it's a joy. — Herb Kelleher

When I started working on Southwest Airlines, I kid you not, only people flying on business and very wealthy people ever flew. — Herb Kelleher

I flew out here on Southwest Airlines. Southwest has a plane that's painted like Shamu the whale from Sea World. Yeah, that'll be easy to find if that went down in the ocean. That'll be nice, when you're trying to get out and a real whale's humping your window. — Robert Schimmel

In 2009 Southwest Airlines was the largest airline in the world based on the number of passengers that fly the airline each year,30 and in 2011 it was not only America's leading low-cost carrier but was also rated America's favorite airline by Consumer Reports.31 Joe Harris, a labor lawyer for Southwest, explains that the company's harmonious employee relations are no accident. "At Southwest, our employees come first; our customers come second; and our stockholders come third," he said. "The rationale is pretty simple. If we treat our employees right, they're going to treat our customers right. If our customers are treated right, they will come back and our stockholders will benefit."32 — Douglas Van Praet

Some of the greatest businesses operating from a deeper purpose have a real commitment to service, like Four Seasons, Joie de Vivre hotels, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue. — John Mackey

There are many people talking about access to space and, 'How can we make that cheaper? How can we turn that into a Southwest Airlines versus the big airlines?' — Buzz Aldrin

A woman on a Southwest Airlines flight gave birth to a baby. As soon as he was born, the baby said, 'I had more leg room in the womb.' — Conan O'Brien

Everybody in Texas would tell me that they thought I was nuts trying to start Southwest Airlines. There probably weren't 10 people in the state who would have given a plug nickel for our chances of making a dollar. So sometimes, you need a little courage, too, just to buck popular opinion. — Herb Kelleher