Welcome

Friends,

My first flight was on Southwest. I grew up down the road from Love Field Airport.

And I really love Southwest Airlines.

Legally, Southwest might be just a stock symbol and an assortment of owned or borrowed 737s. But the people of an airline and the communities it connects are what actually make an airline. And over 50 years, this is what has made Southwest special.

Let’s get going.

Links

Incredible 2006 photo of a KLM 747 landing at SXM.

WSJ analysis of the situation at LUV, which provides context for today’s column.

Severe turbulence on a United Express flight.

New Qantas spot.

Story

“No matter how big you get, taking care of your employees—being interested in your employees, communicating with your employees, honoring your employees—is still Job One,” Herb Kelleher to business-school students at Stanford in 2006.

At five years old, I flew alone for the first time.

It was 1994, and I convinced my parents to let me visit my cousins in Austin. They bought me a ticket on Southwest Airlines as an unaccompanied minor, and I sat in the rear-facing club seats at the front of the 737’s cabin for our half-hour flight from Dallas Love Field to Austin’s now-closed Mueller Airport.

It was a great flight (I mean, I still remember it), and so much of Southwest Airlines’ story shaped not just my love for aviation but my love for entrepreneurship. I only met Herb Kelleher once, but he lived up to the man he was storied to be.

And my point in all of this is that Southwest is more than an airline.

I fear the current board of directors and the analysis at large from the activist hedge fund that has shaped the last many months at the airline have lost sight of this. Southwest is not Delta, American, or United. It is not Spirit or IndiGo or WestJet.

Nor is it AirTran, Virgin America, or US Airways.

I am not making a statement of pleasant sentiment or nostalgia—past success is not an indicator of future performance. And to be clear, there is broad culpability for the airline’s current, troubled state. But overlooking what has made a brand valuable—and how that value strategically translates to future profitability—is existential.

A failure to recognize Southwest’s unique prowess—that the airline represents something more than just an airline—will lead to the carrier’s demise.

Big picture: I hope that does not happen.

Happy flying.

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Remember, this life you are living has meaning. Be well today.

-Tommy