Southwest Airlines Performance And Profitability 3 Essay

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics a total of 631,939,829 passengers boarded domestic flights in the United States in the year 2010. This averages to 1.73 million passengers flying per day (Cessoni.) All of these people must go through security checkpoints provided by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA.) TSA’s history, cost, and specific purpose are ideas I will discuss further.

What began as a small Texas airline has grown to become one of the largest airlines in the United States. Today, Southwest Airlines flies over 70 million passengers per year to more than 62 cities. Southwest orchestrates over 3,000 flights per day. The Southwest fleet consists of over 436 jets which have an average age of nine years old. Included in

Southwest Airlines is a major US airline established in 1967 that services a multitude of cities in all 50 states and beyond. The company is known for its outstanding quality in providing services and it 's cost effective ticket prices to its many passengers throughout the nation. This airline is based in the southwestern United States, in the city of Dallas Texas, and due to the tremendous number of airplanes that it has and the timely service that it provides to its passengers, this airline services more US passengers than any other airline. This airline also has the largest fleet of planes of any economical or low-cost airline service in the world and employees more than 45,000.

They serve no meals, do not offer seat assignments, and do not baggage to other airlines. They avoid airports with high landing fees or frequent delay. All of this enables them to make quicker turns and fly more legs each day, resulting in lower fares. Today they are without question the most successful airline in America-if not the world.” (p.8, 2002)

The chart that is listed beneath also displays how discount carriers and majors challenge their opponents for market share in the United States. Delta, Southwest, United, and American Airlines are the leading airlines established by the 2015 domestic

Delta Airlines is the largest airline carrier on the Atlantic Coast. In terms of scheduled passengers carried they were world’s largest airline with 277.6 billion in 2013. Also the second largest

American airline industry is steadily growing at an extremely strong rate. This growth comes with a number economic and social advantage. This contributes a great deal to the international inventory. The US airline industry is a major economic aspect in both the outcome on other related industries like tourism and manufacturing of aircraft and its own terms of operation. The airline industry is receiving massive media attention unlike other industries through participating and making of government policies. As Hoffman and Bateson (2011) show the major competitors include Southwest Airlines, Delta Airline, and United Airline.

Southwest Airlines Co., established in 1971 by Rollin King and Herb Kelleher, began its operations with only three Boeing 737 aircrafts. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas(Hawkins, Misra, & Tang, 2012). Southwest is well known as one of the largest low-cost carriers. With this strategy, the company has dramatically grown up and deeply rooted in the US airline industry. Now, Southwest Airlines Co. operates 633 aircrafts to 93 domestic cities and the highest number of passengers used Southwest Airlines to fly around U.S in Jan 2014 (Hawkins, Misra, & Tang, 2012). To accomplish more than 40th consecutive years of both profitability and competitiveness, Southwest Airlines Company is constantly trying to find the routes to differentiate itself from other domestic carriers (Hawkins, Misra, & Tang, 2012).

The JPDO (Joint Planning and Development Office) has been setup to facilitate the development of NextGen. Apart from that, the tracking system has been updated and routes have been improved significantly. Airline forecasting and algorithms have allowed improvements in prices and costs for airlines in the industry. The average age of an aircraft in the industry is around 13 years. The market is expected to grow and revenues are likely to increase. HOW SOUTHWEST SHOULD CONFRONT THESE THREATS

of public passenger intercity travel. The outlook for the airline industry is good and continued growth is likely.

The airline business is an industry that is competitive and unique, focussing on consumer choice and the responsiveness of airlines to changes in the external business environment. For any airline, this environment can be very complex as it is ‘hard for them to fully understand and impossible for them to fully control’ (The Times, n.d. p1). Virgin Atlantic is an international airline that is based in the UK. It was started by the entrepreneur Richard Branson in 1982 and now flies to 30 destinations around the world (Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd, 2011). By looking at

American Airlines is the largest airline carrier in the US, and after the recent merger in the world. In 2013 American Airlines revenue alone was $24,825,000 and combined $1.95 billion in earnings. With the positive revenue the new American Airline will have a younger fleet giving the passenger the most up-to-date travel experience.

Southwest operates in the United States airline industry, where they have enjoyed success for many years and are the largest passenger airline (Parnell, 2014). Historically, the airline industry has been an extremely volatile industry subject to numerous challenges. Among other things, it has been cyclical, energy intensive, labor intensive, capital intensive, technology intensive, highly regulated, heavily taxed, and extremely competitive (Southwest, 2016). Thus, to maintain a competitive advantage, on July 1st, 2014, they began offering international flights to Aruba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas (Jones, 2014).

One of the world’s most competitive and prominent industries is the airlines industry. It generates huge amounts of income as well as employment each year. Some of the common names in US air travel service providers are Alaska, Northwest, Southwest, US airways, American etc.

* To operate and remain as one of the most profitable airline in the airline industry.