Twenty-five years ago, Herb Kelleher reinvented air travel when he founded Southwest Airlines, where the planes are painted like killer whales, a typical company maxim is "Hire people with a sense of humor," and in-flight meals are never served--just sixty million bags of peanuts a year. By sidestepping "reengineering," "total quality management," and other management philosophies and employing its own brand of business success, Kelleher's airline has turned a profit for twenty-four consecutive years and seen its stock soar 300 percent since 1990. Today, Southwest is the safest airline in the world and ranks number one in the industry for service, on-time performance, and lowest employee turnover rate; and Fortune magazine has twice ranked Southwest one of the ten best companies to work for in America. How do they do it? With unlimited access to the people and inside documents of Southwest Airlines, authors Kevin and Jackie Freiberg share the secrets behind the greatest success story in commercial aviation. Read it and discover how to transfer the Southwest inspiration to your own business and personal life.

"If you look at Southwest Airlines, and I admire what they do, they've been the most successful airline in the industry." --Gerard Arpey, CEO, American Airlines "Through extensive research Jody Hoffer Gittell gets to the bottom of what has sustained Southwest Airlines' positive employee relations and high performance through good and bad times." --Thomas A. Kochan, professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Global Airline Industry Program In an industry with losses in the billions, Southwest Airlines has an unbroken string of 31 consecutive years of profitability. The Southwest Airlines Way examines how the company uses high-performance relationships to create enormous competitive advantage in motivation, teamwork, and coordination among employees. It then goes further to show how any company can foster these powerful cooperative relationships and explains how to: Lead with credibility and caring Invest in frontline leaders Hire and train for relational competence Use conflicts to build relationships Make unions its partners, not its adversaries Build relationships with its suppliers

Nerves of Steel is the captivating true story of Tammie Jo Shults’s remarkable life—from growing up the daughter of a humble rancher, to breaking through gender barriers as one of the Navy’s first female F/A-18 Hornet pilots, to safely landing the severely crippled Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 and helping save the lives of 148 people. Tammie Jo Shults has spent her entire life loving the skies. Though the odds were against her, she became one of the few female fighter pilots in the Navy. In 1994, after serving her country honorably for eight years, Tammie Jo left the Navy and joined Southwest Airlines in the early 1990’s. On April 17, 2018, Tammie Jo was called to service once again. Twenty minutes into a routine domestic flight, Captain Shults was faced with the unthinkable—a catastrophic engine failure in the Boeing 737 caused an explosion that severed hydraulic and fuel lines, tearing away sections of the plane, puncturing a window, and taking a woman’s life. Captain Shults and her first officer, Darren Ellisor, struggled to stabilize the aircraft. Drawing deeply from her well of experience, Tammie Jo was able to wrestle the severely damaged 737 safely to the ground. Not originally scheduled for that flight, there is no doubt God had prepared her and placed her right where she needed to be that day.

When Southwest Airlines made its inaugural flight on June 18, 1971, experts predicted that the company wouldn't last more than ninety days. Some thirty-two years later, Southwest is the beleaguered airline Industry's only profitable major company-Money magazine has named Southwest Airlines' common stock the premier Investment of the last thirty years. Now Southwest's founding president and CEO (1970-78], Lamar Muse, offers a definitive account of the airline's scrappy beginning. The principles and practices that assured the company's success were, largely, Muse's own. Those same winning strategies continue to sustain the company through the market's ups and downs, In Southwest Passage, Muse delivers plain facts and informed opinions that replace convoluted outsider accounts of the company's history. For anyone wondering how the air Industry can renew itself, how Southwest achieved its dominance, or how business really works, this unique story has the answers.

With its low fares and friendly service, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) was one of the most successful regional airlines in American history. Its distinctive orange, red, and white planes, complete with a beaming smile were immediately recognizable to those living on the West Coast. The airline was also known for employing beautiful and sociable flight attendants. Kenny Friedkin, the founder of PSA, started in 1949 with one leased DC-3 and expanded his fleet to serve millions of passengers each year. Although PSA is no longer in operation, its successful business model of low-priced, efficient service was copied by other airlines and today is considered the norm. In addition, former PSA employees still gather annually to relive the camaraderie they experienced as being a part of one of the most unique airlines of all time.

This valuable volume reprints the most important and influential journal articles and papers on aviation management with an extensive introduction by the editor. The volume is designed to improve access to the journal literature for libraries expanding their collections and provide scholars with a convenient and authoritative reference source. Tom Lawton selects the best of the management literature in this area from the top journals as well as including harder-to-find articles in the wider strategic management literature. The volume will be essential reading for all scholars and students interested in aviation management issues as well as those working in the industry who want a snapshot of current thinking in the field.

Hearing to review the results of an oversight investigation. Two FAA Aviation Safety Inspectors have provided evidence raising serious questions of conduct violating the Fed. Aviation Reg¿s. (FARs) in the inspection and maint. program of Southwest Airlines (SWA). FAA employees have engaged in conduct, ¿which constitutes a violation of Fed. law, rule or reg¿n., gross mismgt., an abuse of authority and a substantial damage to public safety.¿ The Maint. Inspector for SWA knowingly allowed the airline to operate in March 2007 (and possibly beyond), and well after the inspection deadlines on a mandatory FAA Airworthiness Directive. There may be a pattern of regulatory abuse and that these regulatory lapses may be more widespread. Illustrations.