Southwest Airlines Community

This post is missing a LUV jet with Eliminator livery! 🙂 ... View more

Wow! It looks like it was a fantastic event. I love Herb's LUV boots! Do you have pictures of Herb One/Colleen One to share? ... View more

Sean, I think you meant to type N791AS. A picture for everyone else to admire: http://www.airliners.net/photo/Alaska-Airlines/Boeing-737-490/1101570/M/ Who pays for special marketing liveries like that and Southwest's Shamu planes? ... View more

May I suggest a Tinker Bell DVD/Blu-Ray blog contest, perhaps using the trivia questions from this flight? 🙂 ... View more

Mark-to-market is the assignment of current market values to future hedge positions (contracts) which is what Sharon explained above as resulting in unrealized, or "paper," gains (2Q) or losses (3Q). A very oversimplified example: You have a hedging contract to purchase oil at $80/barrel in 2010, but the current market value is $70/barrel. Under mark-to-market, you must value that contract as if you were paying $80/barrel for $70/barrel oil today, so you end up with an unrealized loss of $10/barrel. A revolver drawdown is the borrowing of money from a revolving line of credit. A bank has agreed to loan $600M. Of that, Southwest has opted to borrow $400M. $200M remains available to be borrowed, and the $400M, or any portion thereof, can be borrowed again once it has been repaid (hence "revolving"). Southwest is on the hook for interest payments on that $400M in the meantime. ... View more

More on how the 737 was chosen from Lamar Muse's "Southwest Passage": "Southwest's equipment had to be pure jet. [...] For our purposes, the options available to us were -- in order of general preference -- the Boeing 737-200, DC-9-30, BAC-111-400, DC-9-10, Boeing 737-100, and the French Caravelle. Rollin King and I spent a week surveying the operations of the California intrastate airline Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) at their headquarters in San Diego and confrimed that the Boeing 737 used by that airline was definitely our first preference. [...] I learned that Boeing had some "white tail" 737s on hand built on speculation for PSA, Air California, and Piedmont Airlines, but all three had refused delivery of the aircraft due to the major depression then raging in the airline industry. Boeing had gone so far as to finish off the aircraft using those airlines' interior designs but had yet to paint the exteriors with any livery, thus the term "white-tail." However, they had some pretty fancy ideas about their value, and we got nowhere with Boeing on either price or financing terms. Though there were plenty of the last four types on our list available, there were no used DC-9-30s -- our second preference -- on the market. We decided, however, that our best chance was with Douglas, which had expressed strong interest in meeting our requirements with new DC-9-30s, so Rollin and I in late March flew out to LAX, where a Douglas limousine picked us up to take us down to Long Beach to hammer out a deal with them. But the closer I got to Long Beach, the more I realized I really wanted Boeing 737-200s, and because few other airlines seemed interested in them, this seemed to be the moment to put maximum pressure on Boeing's sales department. [...] Upon arriving at the Douglas office complex, I went to a pay phone in the lobby and called Dan Palmer, Boeing's director of domestic sales. I told him where I was, what we were fixing to do, as well as what I would prefer to do. [...] I told him that Boeing had one hour to put us into their equipment -- otherwise forget it. Dan said he would be back to us within the hour, whichever way the decision went. He called back within thirty minutes. Boeing had accepted our proposal to the letter with an interest rate of 1.5 percent above prime. Our meeting with the Douglas people was barely underway, and it was a little embarrassing trying to explain to them what had happened, but they were gentlemen enough to give us a ride back to the airport. We caught the next flight back to Dallas, where we could now really get moving on tangible preparation for the commencement of scheduled service." ... View more

Fascinating video! It is interesting to me that "Baltimore" crabs are imported from the Gulf of Mexico... ... View more

This post immediately reminded me of a Spirit article from earlier this year: http://www.spiritmag.com/2008_04/clickthis/04clapping.php ... View more

To the first anonymous TWU555 commenter: Your union's website states, "When the first TWU backed contract was ratified in 2001 the starting pay had reached $8.60 on the ramp. The top out had come down to 11 steps and the pay had shot up to $24.00 an hour. We now lead the industry. We have added earned award days that hadn’t existed before and our 401K plan is one of the best around including corporations outside of the airline industry." Considering that your contract is already industry-leading, and that very high fuel costs and the faltering economy are exacting a heavy toll on the industry and present a real threat to SWA's profitability streak, I'm curious to know what you think SWA can afford to appreciably improve in your next contract. Thank you! ... View more

Alfred, be sure to notify Southwest before your next flight so they can accommodate your allergy by not serving peanuts. They won't be able to control what other passengers bring on board, but your specific concern can certainly be addressed with adequate notice. ... View more

Did you happen to spy any honey roasted peanuts being packaged in Southwest bags? 🙂 I am eagerly awaiting their return. ... View more

BRATWURST. Is it lunchtime, yet? ... View more

I've been selected for jury duty just once for a civil trial between two insurance companies. I found the experience very interesting and frustrating (ten of us were unsuccessful in changing the opinions of two jurors). During our initial instructions we were told to leave our cell phones in the jury room. I thought, "no way, I'll keep mine with me and turned off." That worked well until my I forgot to turn it off after returning from lunch and it rang in the middle of the hearing. I panicked and stopped the ringing by ripping the battery off of the phone. The judge was understandably upset, and I was extremely embarrassed! The other civic duty I've enjoyed and recommend everyone do at least once is working the polls on election day. It's a very eye-opening experience in many respects. ... View more

Blog Boy needs TiVo. ... View more

When can we expect "A Day in the Life of Blog Boy"? I've always wanted to know how he posts to the blog using stone tablets... 😄 ... View more

Yet another fantastic and interesting video! The late Lamar Muse wrote in his book, "Southwest Passage," about the birth of the ten-minute turn following the court-ordered charter shutdown and deal to sell the fourth 737 to Frontier: "I had called a staff meeting to inform our supervisors that Southwest [... was] still dead in the water unless we could continue our every-hour flights in the Dallas-Houston market with on a three-aircraft fleet. I explained that the only way we could do that was to fly the airplanes fifty minutes and turn them in ten minutes, as opposed to the twenty-five minutes we were currently scheduling. Their response? We can, and we will! Would you believe that our flight completion and on-time performance factors actually improved after instituting the ten-minute turns into our schedule on May 15, 1972? It was a team effort lead by Bill Franklin [then the VP of Ground Operations, I believe]." ... View more

Bob, did you produce this video? I love the opening sequence. I'd like to see a sequel to this video detailing the prank calls Reservations receives. I need new ideas. 😉 😄 ... View more

Hmm... Seems like there are some social networking options yet to be enabled, which reminds me of a recent BusinessWeek article: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc20070314_884996.htm It all looks awesome so far! 🙂 ... View more

That video is simply unreal. It is indeed a testament to the crew and the aircraft and the journalists who covered that story. ... View more

Twins here, too, though not personally if you know what I mean. 😉 My recommendation is to make getting them on the same schedule the first order of business. In other words, when one wakes to eat, feed the other two, etc. Unmatched schedules with twins is one thing... I can only imagine how much more chaos a third would be! Congratulations, and best wishes! I'm expecting a follow-up blog post with pictures come August. 😄 ... View more

Here are my guesses: Alessandra Ambrosio Laetitia Casta Selita Ebanks Izabel Goulart Marisa Miller Inà ... View more

UNCOMFORTABLE!!! 😄 ... View more

Not even a month ago the FAA considered this issue resolved. Days before they were to be taken behind the woodshed by Oberstar's committee, they panic, pull a ridiculous dollar amount out of thin air and demand that Southwest pay it. This entire kerfuffle is nothing more than a political game, and Southwest is the FAA's pawn. ... View more

DING! has turned three Southwest doth LUV thee Check for its offers early and often You can fly from sea to shining sea! ... View more

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a blog team win. 🙂 ... View more

That looks like it was a lot of fun. I smell a marketing and special livery opportunity... Official airline of LEGOLAND California and LEGO One! ... View more

Tommy: Your admission about talking too loud is my concern about permitting VoIP calling onboard. I worry that the inflight din will cause people to unconsciously talk louder because they think they aren't being heard, similar to how cell phone users talk slower and louder in a noisy or weak signal environment. ... View more

Will the actual network management be handled by SWA or Row 44? Will FAs be trained to provide tech support (only half joking)? Will some sort of traffic management be employed to prevent the available bandwidth from being saturated with p2p, video, or malicious traffic such as worms? ... View more

Speaking of doing the right thing... These blog comments seem like subliminal advertisements for a recently published book. ;) Speaking of a recently published book... I'm on chapter 40 and have yet to read where doing the right thing requires labeling buttons as you describe, Bob. Perhaps that will be mentioned in the new foreward that accompanies the paperback. 😄 ... View more

The press release announcing these changes uses the word "productive" four times. Hmm... ... View more