Word: southwest
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...folks know Buffalo, N.Y., for its chicken wings, but in the airline business it's famous for ferocious winter storms that bring air travel--and sometimes all travel--to a frozen halt. That's what happened last December when Buffalo was buried under a record 7 ft. of snow. Southwest Airlines, with its lean scheduling system, was hit harder than most. One of its planes got stuck so long it came due for a routine maintenance check. Without it, the plane wouldn't be allowed to fly--and that would cost Southwest tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue...
Johnny Bomaster, 38, had an idea. A certified maintenance-check mechanic for Southwest, he lived just seven miles from the Buffalo airport but couldn't reach it over roads clotted with snow. So he tossed his toolbox onto the back of a snowmobile and zoomed through the drifts to the stranded plane. By next morning, when the runways and roads had been plowed and passengers were streaming through the terminal, Bomaster had thoroughly checked the plane and allowed it to take off fully loaded. (A new storm then stranded him at the airport for an additional 24 hours...
Bomaster and workers like him are a big part of the reason that amid record losses by its competitors, Southwest last week reported $75 million in earnings for the third quarter and stands as the only profitable U.S. airline among the top eight. AMR, parent of American Airlines, the world's largest, just reported a third-quarter loss of $924 million. U.S. Airways is reorganizing under bankruptcy protection, and industry experts expect it will soon be joined by United Airlines. Delta has announced that "to survive for the long term" it will lay off an additional...
...does Southwest do it? The answer starts with lower costs. The Air Transport Association reports that other major airlines (American, United, Delta, Northwest, Continental, U.S. Airways, America West and Alaska) had unit costs--measured in cost per seat for each mile flown--nearly 100% higher than Southwest. A study by the consulting arm of Unisys concluded that the other majors would need to cut spending a staggering $18 billion just to level the playing field with Southwest. The airline "has long-term, systemic advantages the other carriers can likely never match," says Vaughn Cordle, an airline pilot who heads...
Although starting pay for some positions at Southwest lags behind that of other carriers, Southwest has traditionally made up that deficit with generous profit sharing and stock options--based on shares that have dropped 24% so far this year, after almost doubling in value over the past five years. The company is valued at $10.8 billion, more than the other major U.S. airlines combined. And employees own more than 10% of Southwest's outstanding shares. Southwest also offers something even scarcer than a valuable stock: job security. While the other majors are shrinking their service and laying off workers, Southwest...