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Southwest Airlines is one of the most popular airlines in the U.S. Through their great customer service and customer policies they have some of the most loyal customers around. As someone who has been frequently flying for over ten years and has been a very loyal Southwest customer, I wanted to learn more about the organization, how employees are treated, to see if the company culture is the same across the board, and look into how they handle incidents, and response to the public.

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When I know that I will be flying, Southwest is always the first app that I visit to look at different flight options and pricing. In the past five years I have travelled with Southwest for the majority of my flights and their great customer policies are the reasons why. Each traveler gets two free checked bags and a free carry-on. There is no paying for seats with their open board process where customers are welcome to pick their own seat anywhere on the aircraft when they board. Southwest's boarding process is so quick and smooth. Cancelling, rebooking, or changing a flight on Southwest is so easy and can be done through the app in under a minute. One of my favorite reasons of flying Southwest is the great customer service that they provide. I have not run into any Southwest employee that appeared to be in a bad mood or not liking their job. Their agents are always so helpful, caring, and friendly. Their flight attendants go above and beyond and making sure all of the passengers are taken care of and many of them will have fun things to say over the intercom that makes the whole plane laugh.

Their customer service is also top notch. I have only ever had a few reasons where I needed to contact their customer service agents. I have contacted customer service via phone and social media and the service has been excellent on both platforms. Every agent that I have interacted with has been so helpful and concerned and solved the issue promptly. Having amazing customer service really seals the deal for their customers.

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I have talked about how friendly and inviting the culture at Southwest is for the customers, now time to dive deeper into the employee side and over all culture for the airline. Above is a link to Southwest's Culture page on their website. The websites clearly states the company's purpose, vision, and values.
Southwest purpose: "Connect people to what's important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel."
Southwest vision: "To be the world's most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline."
Some of the Southwest values are: efficiency, integrity, service with LUV, and teamwork.
They talk a lot about the company and it's employees having heart and truly caring for one another and their customers. They have a coined "LUV" and use it on a lot of company branding to emphasis the love they have for their customers and employees. The website also provides different videos and examples of their culture in real life by giving back to the community, giving their employees recognition and spotlight, and bringing attention to their own culture committee that is made up of Southwest employees to maintain and continue the organization's great culture.

Tammy Romo, Southwest's Executive Vice President and CFO talked about the company's culture in an interview with Forbes saying, "Our people and our culture are by far two of our key strengths at Southwest Airlines. We have a very caring culture... As employees, we celebrate one another and we take time to appreciate each other. We come together as a Southwest family, to provide incredible customer service" (Thomson, 2018). When the article was published, Southwest Airlines was being recognized for the 24th straight year for accepting the award of Most Admired Companies from Fortune Magazine. Having people speak greatly about the culture throughout the organization and public eye speaks volumes for how the culture is truly valued and utilized.

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Our Culture is woven into all aspects of our business and our Employees'lives, from the way Employees treat each other to the way that our Company puts our Employees first. Three vital elements of our Culture are appreciation, recognition, and celebration.

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Back in 2018, Southwest Flight 1380 had a ruptured engine, the plane had to do an emergency landing, and one passenger lost their life. Many people knew what was happening before the plane even landed because passengers were buying Wifi plans to contact their loved ones.
Even though this incident was horrific, the way that Southwest responded and handled the aftermath of the incident is what sets them apart from other airlines. The CEO, Gary Kelly, issued a prompt statement that properly addressed the concerns, horrific events that happened, sent out sincere condolences, and informed the public that Southwest would be working diligently in the following days to handle any and all concerns. Southwest also changed their website and social media graphics from their usual colorful logo to a broken, gray heart to show sympathy. They also stopped all marketing communications for the near future and gave the flight passengers $5,000 and a Southwest credit of $1,000 to go towards transportation costs to get them to their final destination.
All in all, Southwest Airlines did a great job handling this incident. They proved they value and believe in their culture through their actions of reaching out and compensating customers for the traumatic events they had to go through. A few months after the incident a poll was conducted and almost half of respondents said they had a positive view of Southwest - the best showing of any U.S. airline (Fladung, 2018). Throughout everything Southwest remained true to their brand and culture and that made all the difference in this situation.

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Incident Two - 1,800 Cancelled Weekend Flights

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Incident Two - 1,800 Cancelled Weekend Flights

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In October of this year, Southwest Airlines cancelled over 1,800 flights in one weekend. Southwest reported that the cancellations were due to bad weather and a FAA air traffic management problem. Despite their claims, other airlines had very few cancellations that weekend. CEO, Gary Kelly, issued an apology on "Good Morning America" and acknowledge that there were no FAA delays and that with the large amount of delays they had it can typically take a few days to get the schedule back on track (Maile & Kaji, 2021).
Since it wasn't the FAA delays like originally thought, many people took to speculate the cancellations were due to staffing issues that Southwest has been seeing for previous months. The head of Southwest's pilot union, Capt. Casey Murray, even turned to call out the company and how they have been scheduling pilots. Murray said these types of problems would keep happening if the issue was not addressed (Maile & Kaji, 2021).
This incident was not the best look for Southwest Airlines. While putting out a statement quickly is important, putting out a truthful statement is even more important for a company who claims honesty is one of their values. Having people from the company speak badly about the company in the media also does not help. It seems like there may be some trouble happening within the organization that need to be addressed before the company loses its reputation for having a great culture.

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Overall it seems as though the culture that Southwest Airlines provides for their customers is the same throughout the entire organization. Southwest seems to have a pragmatic approach to the culture of their company. All employees and the majority of customers engage and show the company's culture in every scenario. Southwest's caring and trusting values show through and encourage members and employees alike to be committed to the organization.
Southwest also appears to have a form of ideological control over it's employees. The company set out a clear set of standards to adhere and act out the company culture and the employees follow through and appear to be very dedicated to the goals and values of Southwest Airlines.

Southwest has many strengths. They provide a unified and caring culture and environment for their employees and customers. They pride themselves in their excellent customer service. And they have amazing and accommodating policies.

While Southwest provides a warm and welcoming company culture, they do have some weaknesses to be addressed. There is clearly some issues happening within the organization that was made public after the 1,800 cancelled flights in October. The organization needs to address the issues that they are having and come up with a long-term plan on how to prevent that fiasco from happening again.
Southwest does have some woman in higher up positions, 30% of executive positions (Quigley, 2018), within the airline, but there could be more or have a rotation between positions. An example of this would be the position of President of Southwest Airlines. The company saw its first and only female president of the organization from 2001-2008 (Leadership California, 2019). While it is good they have had a women in that position, almost 12 years without another woman in that position does not sit well for the company.

My suggestions for Southwest would be to go back to their basics and fix some of the communication problems from within, especially their scheduling issues. With some minor adjustments, I have no doubt that the airline will be back to their high standing for U.S. airlines.