Southwest Airlines Community

I don't know about you, but one of my favorite movies is Airplane, and I just crack up over the scene where the ground crew is wiping the cockpit windows and lifting the nose radome to check the dripstick.  Well, one of our great Customers, Shar Lira, took this photo on June 21 in Phoenix of one of our Captains, who suspiciously looks like our fellow blogger, Ray Stark. Anyway, here's a chance to use your creativity and post a caption for this photo.  (Click on the photo to enlarge.) Of course, we LUV funny! And have a great Fourth of July! ... View more

Like many of you, Southwest is proud to fly the colors of our great nation, and Flag Day on June 14 is a way for all Americans to reflect on the importance of this symbol of our national values. Each and every day, all 455 of our aircraft take to the sky proudly wearing Old Glory on their fins, but oddly enough, our aircraft didn't always wear the national flag. No, this isn't a case of a newfound sense of patriotism on our part. Southwest has always been a domestic airline, and unlike airlines that fly internationally (and in spite of the fact that we have always been proud of our country), there was no requirement for us to display the flag on our aircraft. (If you have ever heard the phrase, "flag carrier," this refers to airlines operating foreign routes.) However, after the horrible events of 9/11, many of our Employees asked if we could start carrying the flag on our aircraft, and even though there was no statutory requirement for us to do this, we certainly felt the emotional need to show that we are a Company of Proud Americans. Our Maintenance and Engineering Department investigated how we could add the flag to our aircraft, and they quickly found a way to make this happen. Many of our Employees and our Customers have asked us why the flag is "backwards on the right side of the aircraft." Whenever a flag is displayed on a stationary flat surface, the flag should be in displayed with the star portion in the upper left.  However, on the right side of our airplanes, the star portion is in the upper right, and some have felt that this runs against proper flag etiquette. Colin Gebhart, who works in our Purchasing Department, provided me with the reason. If the flag was placed on the right side of the aircraft with the stars in the upper left, it would appear as if the flag were flying backward or in retreat because of the direction the aircraft travels. If it were possible to fly a real flag on our aircraft from a flag pole like ships do, an individual looking at the right side of the plane would see the star portion unfurled in the wind with the stars at the upper right. As a result, we follow the recommendations of both the National Flag Foundation and the International Civil Aviation Organization, and the flags on our aircraft "wave" proudly in the same manner as would an actual flag. ... View more

Here's a quick post for the weekend. Be sure and read our newest posts below. On May 30, Southwest kicked off our 35th Anniversary celebration in a big way with a new special aircraft. In conjunction with America's Second Harvest, we unveiled the Spread the LUV aircraft to publicize our drive to gather jars of peanut butter for food banks all across our system. Peanut butter is a lot tastier than liver, so this is a livery that I find "very edible." Our President, Colleen Barrett explained to the crowd of Employees and the media why peanut butter is so important: "Peanut butter, with its high protein content, has long been one of the staples most needed by food banks. It only makes sense that the airline that made the peanut famous would be the one that Spreads the LUV with peanut butter." We are encouraging our Customers and Employees to visit southwest.com (the donation link is below the picture of our Original Employees) to make donations that will purchase 35,000 jars of peanut butter between now and the end of June. The jars will be distributed to food banks across our system, and Southwest will match the donations up to $35,000. At the ceremony, volunteers from Southwest and the North Texas Food Bank unloaded cases of peanut butter from the aircraft and loaded them into the Food Bank's truck, and I was fortunate to be one of those volunteers. One of the great things about working for Southwest is the ability to participate in these events that give back to the community, and we hope that all of you will join in this important effort. ... View more

Sunny Stone recently did a post about a photo session with our Original Employees, and many of you may be interested in this recent article from The New York Times about this wonderful group of people.  All of us at SWA owe so much to those who helped define who we are as a Company and helped establish our Culture.  ... View more

Airplanes are like cars, each one has a specific and unique license plate number, but on aircraft the number is painted on the aircraft, usually near the tail. (Hence, the term "tail number.") Each country has a registration prefix set aside for their exclusive use. Aircraft registered in the United Kingdom carry the "G-" prefix, France has the "F-" prefix, and closer to home, Canadian airplanes carry a "C-" prefix. Some countries, like the ones I mentioned, use all letters in their registrations, but the U.S. uses the "N-" prefix followed by a combination of numbers and letters. I have no earthy idea why we didn't get the "U" designation, but I think it is because the Soviet Union originally used this before World War II. If anyone knows for sure, please post the answer. By the way, the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) guidelines for registration numbers can be found here. The other airplane freaks (besides me) among us know that we normally use "WN" (for our IATA airline code), "SW" or "SA" as our standard registration suffixes for our aircraft. When we went to the FAA to reserve the "N700xx" block of registrations for our Boeing 737-700s, we found that a lot of other aircraft owners like to use 700 numbers in their own registrations. No doubt, high rollers especially like N711xx. As a result, we had to scramble to find suffixes that had not already been taken because some folks had beat us to the punch and were already using our preferred suffixes. So, we turned to the initials of some of our VIPs, and in addition to Herb's (HK) and Colleen's (CB) initials, we used "GS" for Gene Stewart our 737-700 Project Director, "JW" for Jim Wimberly, our now retired Executive Vice President Aircraft Operations (and fellow aircraft nut), "RR" for Ron Ricks, Senior Vice President Law, Airports & Public Affairs, and "GB" for Gary Barron, our former Executive Vice President Operations. We also used "LV" as a contraction for LUV. As the 737-700 fleet grew, we ran out of the N700xx numbers, and next went to N400xx and are currently in the N200xx block. Incidentally, our retired 737-200s used numbers from 20 to about 105, our 737-300s are in the 300 and 600 blocks, and our 737-500s use the 500 block. Unlike some other airlines that assign additional "fleet numbers" (which don't always correspond to the registration) to their aircraft for internal identification, we use the N-number for internal identification. ... View more