HEART OF GOLD

In the first of a two-part series, Airliner World takes a nostalgic look back at the origin story of Southwest Airlines with its founder, the late Herb Kelleher

Resplendent in the carrier’s original Desert Gold livery, Boeing 737 MAX 8, N871HK (c/n 67775), was named The Herbert D. Kelleher after the airline’s founder

AIRTEAMIMAGES.COM/ ALEX PEAKE

With its legendary cowboy culture, cuisine and strong southern hospitality, Texas is famous for many things. For fans of low-cost airlinses, there are few who challenge the state as the birthplace of the modern budget carrier. The Lone Star State has a pair of pioneering figures to thank for putting it on the aviation map. Since its launch in 1971 by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King, Southwest Airlines has grown to become one of the world’s most profitable carriers. In doing so, it has defined the low-cost, low-fare business model copied countless times by operators at home and abroad.

A unique corporate culture, a dollop of dogged determination, and a sprinkling of good fortune

has helped the airline to grow from three aircraft on three routes within Texas to the current operation which features hundreds of jets, thousands of flights a day and tens of thousands of employees. By almost every metric, it ranks in the top three or four biggest airlines in the United States, even trumping some of the nation’s big legacy names.

Superlatives aside, a critical question remains: how did it all begin? It might surprise you to learn that Kelleher never planned to start an airline.

After law school and working as a trial lawyer, he wanted to try his luck as an entrepreneur, as he explained in a fascinating interview with Key Publishing in 2010: When I was called in to run the airline full time [in 1982], I stayed up all night trying to find out as much as possible about its problems… it’s turned out alright, though.”

“Starting an airline was not in the plan. I knew nothing about the business. "

Legend has it that Kelleher and one of his law clients, Texas businessman Rollin King, developed the concept that later became Southwest Airlines on a cocktail napkin in a San Antonio restaurant. He explained: “In those days, the industry was regulated. The only way to create an airline was to use a loophole to fly intra-state. Pacific Southwest Airlines [PSA] had started as an intra-state in California. We looked at it as a role model. Trans-Texas was a monopoly carrier in small cities, and Braniff was a monopoly carrier in big cities. They had some of the highest fares in the USA.”

The lucrative model pioneered by Kelleher and his team has been emulated by countless other airlines around the world

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