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Southwest Strategy

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Submitted By pumpinty2004
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I. Company background

Southwest Airlines is one of the US based major air carrier based out of Dallas Texas where it commenced operations on June 18, 1971. It was founded by Rollin King and Herb Kelleher got together and decided to start a "different kind of airline”. " They began with one simple notion: If you get your passengers to their destinations when they want to get there, on time, at the lowest possible fares, and make darn sure they have a good time doing it, people will fly your airline" (1). Southwest started with three Boeing 737 aircrafts with focus of serving mainly three cities in the state of Texas; Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. By summer of 1993 Southwest already became the 7th largest airline in the US. Today Southwest operated more than 3,400 flights a day serving 93 destinations across the US and five other countries in the Americas with over 665 aircrafts in its fleets. Southwest strategy is clear and simple, it’s a three headed monster strategy that focuses on, short-haul, high -frequency and low-cost. The NYSE symbol for the company is LUV, which indicated the home of the company at the Dallas Love Field airport and the theme of the cordial relationship created and maintained between Southwest employees and its customer.

On Jan 22nd 2014, CEO and chairman of the board announced a record annual income of $1.1 billion or $1.64 per diluted share which is 20 cent higher than the industry average return per share during the same period. This performance is an increase of 45% compared to the performance in 2013 of $754 million. The company has been running profit consistently since 1973. II. Resources One of the main categories of resources that southwest airline has as a strength is its physical resources. The company had 665 aircraft as of January 2015 which is the largest portion of its physical resources which

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