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Southwest Airlines Essay

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Southwest Airlines Essay
Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airline started out in 1967 and has been different even from its inception. The airline flew to three cities at first and allured customers with flights that departed and arrived on time at the lowest rate possible. This was important to business people that needed to get to and from Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio on business (History, 2013). It was also important to make sure people had a good time while traveling and dedicated their business to a high quality of customer satisfaction. Southwest success has been built on a cocktail of low costs, low fares, frequent flights and a rapid expansion to new cities. But with the high fuel prices, growth has been harder to find, and analysts have questioned whether …show more content…
It now has 141 daily departures there, reflecting the fastest growth in its network. Frontier Airlines, based in Denver but wedged between Southwest and rising fuel costs, couldn’t keep up. It filed for bankruptcy in 2008, though it kept flying (Mouawad, 2010). In Las Vegas, Southwest effectively drove out most competition from US Airways, which retreated to Phoenix. With 212 daily flights, Las Vegas is now Southwest’s top city (Mouawad, 2010). Competitors see Southwest as cold-blooded and ruthless. “Their approach is to search out weak companies and contest them out of business,” says Bryan Bedford, the chairman and chief executive of Republic Airways, which bought Frontier out of bankruptcy last year. “It’s no different than Wal-Mart plunking a big-box store near a local family-owned grocery store; you either respond to the competition, or you get out (Mouawad, …show more content…
Southwest also offers fly to earn rewards the more you fly the more points you accumulate and the more free flights you earn through their Rapid Rewards program (One Report, 2013). They offer any day any time flights as well not like other airlines that have certain dates you can fly with a free trip voucher. Southwest airlines also prefers for customers to book their flights using their website and not going through a travel
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