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I recommend reading Great by Choice [1] which talks more about Southwest Airlines and what makes them great. The book is about "10X companies" and what they hav

by rpedela 11y ago

I recommend reading Great by Choice [1] which talks more about Southwest Airlines and what makes them great. The book is about "10X companies" and what they have in common, but also what they do differently from their competitors. For example, Southwest Airlines copied PSA's business model verbatim but PSA [2] went out of business. The book talks about why. The main reason I like the book and others in the series [1] is that it is like reading a really long research paper about what makes great companies great with entertaining anecdotes sprinkled in. 1. http://www.jimcollins.com/books.html http://www.jimcollins.com/books.html 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines

baakss 11y ago
Seconded on the book choice. Although, I thought the business parts of the book were excellent, but the mountain climbing anecdotes were absolutely gut wrenching. I actually at times found some of those passages about people freezing to death difficult to read. Others may have found it a bit more entertaining than I did though, and the life lessons about preparation and calculations are applicable to business.
moheeb 11y ago
I don't consider Southwest Airlines great at all. They are my least favorite airline to fly. I've experienced some pretty terrible customer service from them. I feel their boarding routine is the worst in the business. What, in your opinion, makes them "great"?
- baakss 11y ago
  From an article attached to the book: "From an initial list of 20,400 companies, we sifted through 11 layers of cuts to identify cases that met all our tests (our study era ran through 2002). Only seven did. We labeled our high-performing study cases with the moniker "10X" because they didn't merely get by or just become successful. They truly thrived. Every 10X case beat its industry index by at least 10 times. Consider one 10X case, Southwest Airlines (LUV). Just think of everything that slammed the airline industry from 1972 to 2002: Fuel shocks. Deregulation. Labor strife. Air-traffic controller strikes. Crippling recessions. Interest rate spikes. Hijackings. Bankruptcy after bankruptcy after bankruptcy. And in 2001, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. And yet if you'd invested $10,000 in Southwest Airlines on Dec. 31, 1972 (when it was just a tiny little outfit with three airplanes, barely reaching breakeven and besieged by larger airlines out to kill the fledgling), your $10,000 would have grown to nearly $12 million by the end of 2002, a return 63 times better than the general stock market. These are impressive results by any measure, but they're astonishing when you take into account the roiling storms, destabilizing shocks, and chronic uncertainty of Southwest's environment. Meanwhile, Southwest's direct comparison, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), flailed and was rendered irrelevant, despite having the same business model in the same industry with the same opportunity to become great." Src: http://www.jimcollins.com/books/great-by-choice.html http://www.jimcollins.com/books/great-by-choice.html
- deleted 11y ago
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- chrismcb 11y ago
  Southwest doesn't charge for changing your ticket. They don't charge for your bag. Their current boarding is better than it used to be. And it is mostly faster than many other airlines. The best thing about southwest is I don't feel like they are trying to nickel and dime me to death

by rpedela 11y ago

baakss 11y ago

Seconded on the book choice. Although, I thought the business parts of the book were excellent, but the mountain climbing anecdotes were absolutely gut wrenching. I actually at times found some of those passages about people freezing to death difficult to read. Others may have found it a bit more entertaining than I did though, and the life lessons about preparation and calculations are applicable to business.

moheeb 11y ago

I don't consider Southwest Airlines great at all. They are my least favorite airline to fly. I've experienced some pretty terrible customer service from them. I feel their boarding routine is the worst in the business. What, in your opinion, makes them "great"?

baakss 11y ago
From an article attached to the book: "From an initial list of 20,400 companies, we sifted through 11 layers of cuts to identify cases that met all our tests (our study era ran through 2002). Only seven did. We labeled our high-performing study cases with the moniker "10X" because they didn't merely get by or just become successful. They truly thrived. Every 10X case beat its industry index by at least 10 times. Consider one 10X case, Southwest Airlines (LUV). Just think of everything that slammed the airline industry from 1972 to 2002: Fuel shocks. Deregulation. Labor strife. Air-traffic controller strikes. Crippling recessions. Interest rate spikes. Hijackings. Bankruptcy after bankruptcy after bankruptcy. And in 2001, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. And yet if you'd invested $10,000 in Southwest Airlines on Dec. 31, 1972 (when it was just a tiny little outfit with three airplanes, barely reaching breakeven and besieged by larger airlines out to kill the fledgling), your $10,000 would have grown to nearly $12 million by the end of 2002, a return 63 times better than the general stock market. These are impressive results by any measure, but they're astonishing when you take into account the roiling storms, destabilizing shocks, and chronic uncertainty of Southwest's environment. Meanwhile, Southwest's direct comparison, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), flailed and was rendered irrelevant, despite having the same business model in the same industry with the same opportunity to become great." Src: http://www.jimcollins.com/books/great-by-choice.html http://www.jimcollins.com/books/great-by-choice.html
deleted 11y ago
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chrismcb 11y ago
Southwest doesn't charge for changing your ticket. They don't charge for your bag. Their current boarding is better than it used to be. And it is mostly faster than many other airlines. The best thing about southwest is I don't feel like they are trying to nickel and dime me to death