I’m back in Washington after a great visit to Dallas and Southwest Airlines’ headquarters for media day. Kudos to their communications team for putting together a fantastic program for the reporters, analysts, and bloggers present. Thanks are also due to Southwest for its hospitality and openness. Southwest had us meeting and talking with their top executives, right up to Gary Kelly.

Me with Paula Berg
A special thanks goes to Southwest’s “blog girl” and communications director, Paula Berg, who was responsible for inviting us “emerging media” folks down to Dallas. She runs Nuts about Southwest, which Brett Snyder calls “the best” of the airline blogs. It was a real pleasure to meet Paula.

Me with Rob Mark
I also had the pleasure of meeting a number of the industry’s top bloggers in person, all of whom you’ll find in the blogroll on the right and many of whom I’ve communicated with by e-mail in the past. Jetwhine‘s Robert Mark; Flight reporter Megan Kuhn, who writes the Terminal Q blog; Holly Hegeman of Plane Business; and Star-Telegram reporter Trebor Banstetter, who blogs with a Metroplex focus at Sky Talk.
Paula said she had hoped that Brett Snyder (a.k.a. the Cranky Flier) could make it, but his nuptials this weekend seem to have taken priority. Congratulations!
Southwest’s Kelleher gives Lindbergh Lecture
Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged business, history, humor, mergers, misc., regulation, southwest on May 13, 2008| 1 Comment »
Herb Kelleher, the legendary founder of Southwest Airlines, proponent of low fares, and friend of deregulation, delivered the Charles A. Lindbergh Memorial Lecture tonight at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. He reflected on his long career in aviation, on the fundamentals of Southwest, and offered a few comments about the future of the airline industry. As usual, Kelleher’s lecture was full of humor — most of it at his own expense.
Kelleher recounted a number of critical moments in Southwest’s history, from the four years of litigation just to get started to the fight to operate out of Dallas’s Love Field. When Southwest launched with $26 fares, its competitors undercut the price by half. Kelleher said that he would still offer the same fare, but that every customer would get a bottle of whiskey. “We became the largest liquor distributor in the state of Texas!” he chuckled.
Even though almost all the major airlines opposed deregulation, and although observers thought Southwest would get stomped in a competitive environment, Kelleher said, “Southwest Airlines supported deregulation of the airline industry throughout the 1970s.” A sign of deregulation’s success? When Southwest launched, only 15 percent of American adults had been on a commercial airline flight. Today, 85 percent have, although this is not only due to lower fares but also a growing economy and general better standards of living. (more…)
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