Why Is Southwest Airlines the Most Successful of All

Flying a couple of trips this week got me thinking about Southwest Airlines’ continued success and the reasons for it. Here are some of the factors and they are simple and replicable:

1. Value at a price customers like
2. Free baggage
3. No unnecessary frills (do peanuts really matter?)
4. Point to Point routes vs. hub and spoke
5. Safety
6. Friendly employees who enjoy their work
7. Simple systems (e.g. boarding)
8. Constantly managed cost of delivery (they hedge fuel costs years in advance)

In other words, SW has figured out what their customers want and give it to them (no less and no more). There’s a huge lesson here for us if we’ll face it!