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Time Capsule Diving, Part One

blusk
Aviator C

No, I didn’t have to wear fins or goggles, and I could breathe just fine.  However,  I was lucky enough to dive to the bottom of the time capsule that was opened at the 40th Anniversary Party in Dallas.  Here’s a report of what I found—so far.  The biggest quantity of items were the guess Southwest’s future contest entries.  Back in 1991, LUVLines invited Employees to guess the number of cities we would be serving, the number of Employees and the number of aircraft on June 18, 2011.  Many of the guesses are from a lot of folks who still work here, and a lot of them either guessed 72 as the correct number of cities or came very close.  A fewer number came close to the correct 35,000 Employees answer, and surprisingly, the number of aircraft we would need in 2011 puzzled almost everyone.  The closest to the correct number was one or two folks with 500.  Here’s a look at some of the other stuff I found:

 


Above is an overhead view of the full capsule.  Some folks attached photos around the sides.  The big roll of paper on the right is presentation of caricature of all our Officers at the time.

Other work groups also made their contributions.  Cargo Accounting contributed this airbill for a RUSH shipment “to the future.” 



Schedule Planning (now Network Planning) deposited this Wright Amendment schedule for Birmingham.  Someone signed for John Jamotta who was at the Paris Air Show.

 

Public Relations (now Communication) donated a copy of the daily news clips to the effort.

And we will close this first look at the time capsule contents with a look at how far we have come in the technology word.  This disk is huge, almost the size of a universal remote.  I’m guessing that none of our hardware can play it anymore.  The note on it says “Bad disk that gave GTR and OAL headaches and unbelievable mental stress and anguish!”  I hope our uncovering it hasn’t released bad computer gremlins.  In the next edition, we will try to figure why America West were the “bad guys” in 1991, a look at the original blue prints for the Headquarters Building, and other interesting stuff. 

1 Comment
Sarah_Nance
Explorer C
I ❤️ the old school floppy disk! That's awesome!