Southwest Airlines Community

What do ZZ Top, Modern Lighting, Philadelphia, and a sesquicentennial have in common? Sesquicentennial? My guest on this, the 150th episode of Red Belly Radio, is Bob Montgomery. Bob is the VP of Airport Affairs. This means he knows everything about most airports (that we fly to) but I talked to him about Love Field and the construction going on there now. ZZ Top? Love Field had one of the first moving sidewalks anywhere. Billy Gibbons, one of the bearded guitarists of ZZ Top, used to be in a band called the Moving Sidewalks. I quiz Bob about that. Modern Lighting? If you have ever been to Love Field you may have noticed the lighting at the corner of the terminal by gates 3, 4, 5. Have you ever seen light fixtures like those anywhere else? Clearly it was someone’s idea of modern and apparently unique to Love Field. In all fairness, it would probably be a very dark corner without them. Texas Ranger? Not a baseball question--but a statuary issue. Bob answers what has and has and will happen to the statue of that Texas Ranger at Love Field. Philadelphia? One of the great visuals of Love Field is a world map in Terrazzo. Since the airport was first build a few borders have changed, a few countries have different names, and my favorite part: Philadelphia is missing the second “L.” Perhaps a difficult word to spell--or perhaps it was done on purpose? The text and Terrazzo are very similar in color--this photo has been altered to show the lettering. Listen to all 150 episodes of Red Belly Radio which is a podcast and is available as a click and listen here on SWALife, or you can subscribe to the RSS fee via iTunes. By subscribing, new episodes will be delivered to your iPod. Just search Red Belly Radio or Southwest Airlines in iTunes and look under Podcasts. ... View more

Is this podcast timely? Yes. Accurate? Well, I really don't know. Some years ago an unknown group or individual with seemingly too much time on their hands decided to apply their math and physics skills to Santa and his reindeer. Easy enough. Just run the numbers and report it. For instance one part of this podcast reports: Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). The research staff at Red Belly Radio was unable to track down an exact date or author(s) of this work. Although in one case, a web site credited faxing (remember that?) to its first form of distribution, which could predate the World Wide Web. Many people do not know that the Internet existed before the Web. It originally connected military installations and later universities, so my guess would be that some math and/or physics majors knocked this out one night after a few libations and not our military who were busy keeping us safe. As for the facts, I have not verified them. Now, lest anyone think the numbers read in this podcast are real I offer this: If I tried, I don't think I could have ever gotten to these numbers. And the fact that I could probably have never get there, pretty much assures I will never check to see if it is correct. The RBR research department could not find any rebuttals or re-calculations of this early effort. BTW, the research department I credit is me doing a Google search. It is all in fun, please enjoy. Happy holidays. Red Belly Radio is a podcast and is available as a click and listen here on SWALife, but you can also subscribe to the RSS fee via iTunes. By subscribing, new episodes will be delivered to your iPod. Just search Red Belly Radio or Southwest Airlines in iTunes and look under Podcasts. ... View more

Recently, I had the chance to talk with Ellen Torbert, our Vice President Diversity & Inclusion, at the Southwest Airlines Diversity Summit hosted at our Headquarters in Dallas. I have known Ellen since I started with Southwest Airlines in 1991, when we worked at the Dallas Reservations Center. In this episode of Red Belly Radio, Ellen shares her thoughts on Diversity and Inclusion; have a listen, I think you will like what she has to say.    Red Belly Radio is a podcast and is available as a click and listen here on SWALife, but you can also subscribe to the RSS fee via iTunes. By subscribing, new episodes will be delivered to your iPod when they are released. Just search Red Belly Radio or Southwest Airlines in iTunes and look under Podcasts. ... View more

You know, this is a pretty cool Company. I have worked at a number of different places in several industries and Southwest has them beat. But as with most things in life, this job is what you make of it.  Last year our Community Relations and Giving Team challenged us to input the multiple hours many of us spend every year volunteering for nonprofit organizations. You may remember Gary speaking about it in his Message To The Field—in fact, for 2012, he charged each Employee to volunteer one hour per quarter! The contest was simple enough. Click on a pledge button, record 40 hours volunteering during our 40th year (2011), and if completed, be entered in a contest where the 40 winners and their guests would head Seattle to pick up a new 737-800 in 2012.  The first night there, and during Seattle's most beautiful time of the year, Boeing hosted a dinner cruise around Puget Sound.  The next day we had a tour around Renton Field, where the 737s are assembled (sorry, no photography was allowed). Later that evening, the group enjoyed a delicious dinner at a place called FareStart, which was a really cool and successful restaurant (and also a nonprofit organization) that helps people down on their luck with training to enter the hospitality industry.  On August 8, we flew home on Aircraft #8316.  Most of us had never flown on a new plane, much less a brand new -800! The trip was fantastic, the Crew was great, and I hope you like this video. For me, it served as a great reminder of a Company that is proud of its Employees who give back to their communities. ... View more

What’s it like to get to tour the Oshkosh airshow?  Well, in early August  (Ok, really late July) I went to the EAA Airventure show in Oshkosh. But I wasn’t there by myself—a couple contest winners joined in on the fun as well.  Simple enough, people entered a sweepstakes at southwest.com. To enter, it took little time and required no math. Jennie and Joe from the Chicago area won! For their effort, they got to fly on the Southwest Airlines charter from Chicago Midway to the show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and hang out for the day. I’m pretty sure a free T-shirt was involved, but they also got to see a lot of cool aircraft and get a little sun burned. Listen to this episode to hear how their day went and what they got to do that most of us never get to experience. ... View more

This episode of Red Belly Radio was recorded at the Center for Alternatives to Summer TV Reruns, (also known as the little studio where we record all sorts of stuff.) Why is this important? Because This episode is about the new TLC show On The Fly and two of the Employees who are featured! I’ve already done the legwork for you. I searched TV Guide and found that this summer, most channels are showing reruns! That means you are free to watch On The Fly every Thursday at 9/8 central--(that’s 8:00, Herb time) or set your DVRs and watch at your leisure. And when you watch, you will see Jennifer and Zaneta. I recently spoke with these two ladies and I can see why the producers wanted to follow them around. A big thank you to them and all of the Employees who volunteered to have a camera crew record their work days ... View more

When Southwest (and I assume other airlines) opens a new city, we often send an airplane with some people to get both the airplane and the people to the new city. The people being moved might be people from Communication to deal with media in that new city, a Flight Crew to fly the plane the next day, someone from Fuel Management to coordinate fuel stuff, or maybe a videographer—that’s where I came in. And of course the plane has to get there too so that there is a plane for the next day to whisk our Customers and their free bags away on the first day of service. A flight like this is called a Ferry Flight and on our most recent flight from DAL to EWR, we had a group of recently-trained Ramp Agents. This group did not make up all of the Rampers in EWR, but it was all of the New Hires from New Jersey. Being the nails-tough journalist that I am, I included a question about how they feel when New Jersey is depicted on shows like The Housewives of New Jersey, or The Jersey Shore—their response? Well check it out. ... View more

Have you ever played the basketball game "Horse?" it may been called "Pig" or any other number of animals or terms, but you play it by making a trick or difficult shot and the other person has to match it or he/she gets a letter. Each miss earns a letter and the first to miss enough to spell the word loses. So imagine playing with some guys who have hit shots (using regulation basketballs and hoops) from the top of Cowboy's Stadium down to the field? Or from a small airplane down to the ground? Yep, they have done that! We invited Dude Perfect to Southwest Airlines and allowed them to shoot some hoops. This collection of videos will show Dude Perfect hitting some really cool shots and each video will only get more amazing--so keep watching. In the mean time, Red Belly Radio was on hand to get an interview with two of the members, Tyler and Corey. These guys don't know the meaning of "Can't." ... View more

This February, Southwest Mechanics competed in Las Vegas to see if they could come up aces in the AMTSociety Skills Competition. Did the defending champions hit the jackpot? Find out in this fun video! ... View more

Have you ever wondered how Southwest Mechanics compare to mechanics at other carriers? Aircraft Maintenance Professionals met last week in Las Vegas and a team of our Southwest Mechanics showed their talent in the fourth annual AMT Society Skills Competition. Teams from China, Mexico, Australia, and the US competed. This was Southwest's second year to compete and they went into Sin City with a perfect 1 and 0 record. When it was said and done our Southwest mechanics still have that perfect record but now it is two wins! You can't have a successful team without a coach and on this episode of Red Belly Radio I interview the undefeated coach, Tom Zollars, who reveals an exclusive announcement about next year's event. ... View more

Colleen Barrett is one of the founders of Southwest. She worked at the law firm with Herb Kelleher even before Southwest’s first lawsuits and flights. She is now our President Emeritus and know a lot of stuff. Recently I was called upon to shoot some video of Colleen to play for a new class of Flight Attendants, and this audio is from that. Hear her talk about her visions about customer service of 40 years ago (I’ll give you a hint: it hasn’t changed a bit); a recap of our early newspaper ads to hire Flight Attendants; and who was actually flying Southwest in the early days. ... View more

By now you have probably seen posts about who won the Heroes of the Heart for this year. Every Valentine’s day, for 17 years, since 1992, Southwest Airlines has announced the winner of the Heroes of the Heart award. Our Culture Committee and Colleen started this as a special tribute to a behind-the-scenes star workgroup that does not have direct Customer Contact. So who was the18th winner? There were a lot of great groups to choose from, but you’ll have to listen to this episode of Red Belly Radio to get the full scoop. ... View more

My guest on Red Belly Radio this week is David “Fig” Newton and he knows WAY more about this than we have time for in this episode, but if you want to learn about how it works and what it does, this is the podcast to listen to. My guest on Red Belly Radio this week is David “Fig” Newton and he knows WAY more about this than we have time for in this episode, but if you want to learn about how it works and what it does, this is the podcast to listen to. ... View more

This episode of Red Belly Radio is about the new Rapid Rewards program and my guest is Ryan Green from Marketing. No one knows more about this new program than Ryan. Give it a listen and you can talk to acquaintances and sound like an expert, too. This episode of Red Belly Radio is about the new Rapid Rewards program and my guest is Ryan Green from Marketing. No one knows more about this new program than Ryan. Give it a listen and you can talk to acquaintances and sound like an expert, too. ... View more

Foodie Mary Bigham travels on Southwest Airlines to Denver, CO for a day-long food adventure featuring the Southwest Porch and ice skating rink at Skyline Park, Victory Beer cocktails, gourmet hot dogs, exotic meats and delicious treats. ... View more

My guest this week on Red Belly Radio is Brooks Thomas who works in our Emerging Media group and one of his duties is to help keep up with our ever-growing Facebook page. Hear him talk about the Company page and our newest effort, city-specific Facebook pages. The Southwest Airlines Facebook page recently crossed the 1,000,000 followers mark. That is a lot of people and they all have one thing in common—they like Southwest Airlines! ... View more

My guest this week on Red Belly Radio is Brooks Thomas who works in our Emerging Media group and one of his duties is to help keep up with our ever-growing Facebook page. Hear him talk about the Company page and our newest effort, city-specific Facebook pages. My guest this week on Red Belly Radio is Brooks Thomas who works in our Emerging Media group and one of his duties is to help keep up with our ever-growing Facebook page. Hear him talk about the Company page and our newest effort, city-specific Facebook pages. ... View more

Have you ever learned a new word and then you start hearing it all the time? A few years back I learned the word “raconteur.” It is probably French in origin, but it means a talented story teller and retired Captain Dick East fits the bill.   This is the third and last part of story-telling session with Dick East and Houston Ronald McDonald House co-founder Liz Kelly.  He is quite the raconteur and in this installment, hear Dick tell about flying the Spirit of Hope, which is one of our aircraft dedicated to the Ronald McDonald House and the story of his first visit to the original Ronald Mcdonald house in Philadelphia.   Dick also tells the story about his last flight before retirement and some of the surprises along the way. ... View more

This is the third and last part of story-telling session with Dick East and Houston Ronald McDonald House co-founder Liz Kelly.  This is the third and last part of story-telling session with Dick East and Houston Ronald McDonald House co-founder Liz Kelly.  ... View more

Can you name the fastest-growing city in our Company’s history?  That is if you call 150 flights a day and 500 Employees in less than five years fast. Your Coworkers in Denver already know the answer, as does anyone who read the title of this blog. This episode of Red Belly Radio is about Denver! Southwest started service on January 3, 2006, and it has been going strong ever since. On this episode of Red Belly Radio I talk to Chris Mainz who knows all things Denver. We talk about the rapid growth, new service, the Denver Porch, the Southwest Ice Rink, and of course the forthcoming special pushback nicknamed the “Nug Tug.” ... View more