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Flashback Fridays: The 1970s and Southwest Airlines

blusk
Aviator C

In many ways, the birth of Southwest Airlines was one of the few good things to come out of the “Swingin’ Seventies,” unless, of course, you were also born during that decade.  The Sixties were more exciting, more dangerous, more revolutionary, and the Eighties were more optimistic.  One survived the Seventies, but if you did, your shortterm memory was probably under frequent attack.  The Sixties had The Beatles, the Stones, and the other big British groups like The Who, not to mention our own Bob Dylan, and the fusion of Rock with Folk.  We saw the rise of music with a beat and a conscience.  The music of the seventies was disco and self-indulgence, but on the plus side, there were individual artists and bands pushing the edge through album rock.  In the sixties, you wore a flower in your hair to visit San Francisco, in the Seventies Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts in and near the City by the Bay.

 

For iconic images of the Seventies, you can choose from the photos of the helicopter on top of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, with a stream of evacuees or maybe the hostages being held  in Iran.  Economically, the country was suffering from “stagflation” with little growth and high inflation.  You would have been lucky to find a mortgage rate under 12 percent.  Thanks to the OPEC oil embargo, gasoline spiked to $1.00 a gallon, if you were lucky enough to find a station that had gas to sell.  In spite of all this, or maybe because of it, Southwest not only survived, it thrived.

 

How could that be?  We came to life during a weird period when the pocket books of individual Texans were strained, but compared to all the other states, Texas was booming.  Folks were moving to Texas from all over the country.  It was the perfect time to cover the state with high frequency, affordable air fare.  Even those “evil oil barons” like J.R. appreciated Southwest’s convenient, timely service.

 

Rightly or wrongly, the Sixties had removed much of the formality in the relationships businesses had with their customers, and this trend only accelerated in the new decade, especially in Texas where Friendliness had been a trademark for years..  Our Customers liked being treated as a friend instead of a “Mister” or a “Miss.” 

 

During the middle of this “me generation,” something happened that turned our attention back 200 years to the courage of patriots putting their reputations and lives on the line to support one of mankind’s more noble causes, the United States of America.  Our nation’s bicentennial in 1976 was the shining light of the decade, and Southwest learned how to celebrate big time during the bicentennial.  It’s as though we didn’t want to stop celebrating after the bicentennial “went away,” and our parties and events are big deals.

 

Maybe the most important event from the Seventies to affect Southwest (and it probably didn’t feel like it at the time with the daily pressures of running an airline) was the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978.  As we moved into the Eighties, we now had the chance to prove that Americans wanted and needed airlines that were truly able to compete.  The country would become our low-fare laboratory. 

 

So yes, we did thrive during the Seventies, and in fact, we helped change the decade in a small way.  Along the way, we also survived the decade's hairdos, clothing styles, and other now outdated operational procedures depicted in the photos.

2 Comments
Ray_Phillips1
Explorer C
Brian,your "Flashback Friday's " dated Jul 08 "ll has a photo of me that I did not know existed. Early 70's I suppose......SWA Emp.# 13
Anonymous1956
Explorer C
You guys do a great job and really seem like you enjoy it. I flew Delta for 15 years took one trip with Southwest three years and have been on you A-List ever since. You took most of the B/S out of flying Thank you very much Ernest Cox Member 227903141