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Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

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Re: Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

#21

Post by inferiorhuman »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #14
inferiorhuman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, no Herb built up quite a cult, and he was around on the board of directors until 2008. While Gary is a colossal prick what we're seeing is absolutely Herb's legacy. Southwest had already outgrown its reputation as Herb's scrappy little airline by the 2000s. The meltdown is due, in large part, to practices that worked well enough with 90 jets but don't scale to the largest 737 fleet in the world. That lack of aut…

> They only just integrated ticketing (with Apollo, SABRE, and Amadeus) in like 2017. Their scheduling (which is the biggest pain point right now) is still done the old-fashioned Herb way Is this why you STILL can’t see Southwest prices and book them on Google Flights, HipMunk, Kayak, etc?

More or less, yes. Proper SABRE integration came last year, and only for businesses.

https://skift.com/2021/08/06/southwests-expanded-partnership...

Looks like Apollo and Amadeus came in 2020.

https://skift.com/2020/05/19/southwest-airlines-expands-corp...

https://www.businesstravelnews.com/Distribution/Southwest-Go...

So if you use "Kayak for Business" you can book Southwest, otherwise you can click through on the ads that Southwest runs on Kayak. And, yes, it was a deliberate (Herb) choice. So was not being an IATA member and not participating in the IATA clearinghouse. The upside is less overhead the downside is less resiliency. You don't need to care about these things so much when you're flying a regional jet on mostly intra-Texas routes out of an airport that only allows short flights. With a fleet of full-sized airliners, "focus cities" across the country, and an international route network things look a lot different.

https://www.iata.org/en/about/members/airline-list/?search=W...

Re: Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

#22

Post by inferiorhuman »

vba616 wrote: post #17
inferiorhuman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, no Herb built up quite a cult, and he was around on the board of directors until 2008. While Gary is a colossal prick what we're seeing is absolutely Herb's legacy. Southwest had already outgrown its reputation as Herb's scrappy little airline by the 2000s. The meltdown is due, in large part, to practices that worked well enough with 90 jets but don't scale to the largest 737 fleet in the world. That lack of aut…

I don't understand. If their problem is lack of automation, I wonder why were they reportedly melting down due to the automation failing. Superficially, I'd think that's because they were too dependent on automation. Obviously I don't know how to run Southwest better than Herb Kelleher.

What automation Southwest had still required a lot of manual intervention on a regular basis. E.g. scheduling still required manual intervention if a flight didn't go as planned. Luggage was almost entirely manual process (weight and balance, hand written tags, etc) up until very recently. Now it's a mostly manual process. So on a day to day basis things can be brute forced, but when something like scheduling goes tits up and leaves you with a giant mess of luggage you're left to clean up the mess in the most tedious way possible.

They're the mechanical turk of airlines.

Re: Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

#23

Post by theYipster »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #7
gkanai wrote: post #2

Notably, Kelleher stepped down from the CEO role at Southwest in 2001. So this crazy debacle of 2022 is largely a result of management that has not followed Kelleher's guidance.

lol, no Herb built up quite a cult, and he was around on the board of directors until 2008. While Gary is a colossal prick what we're seeing is absolutely Herb's legacy. Southwest had already outgrown its reputation as Herb's scrappy little airline by the 2000s. The meltdown is due, in large part, to practices that worked well enough with 90 jets but don't scale to the largest 737 fleet in the world. That lack of aut…

lol, but then why didn't SW run into this huge mess years ago, or decades ago?

It's because while IT and automation matters, it's not the only thing that matters. The most important thing a CEO can do, especially in this industry, is set culture. That's their greatest role. Culture is far more important than IT.

Herb's positive legacy in this industry is well deserved. This is because Herb set the culture at Southwest, and it's well known that Southwest's employee culture has been--under Herb's leadership--its greatest asset. Herb set it in past crises, such as when they had to sell their fourth airplane to keep the airline afloat, and Herb got the employees to band together to create the 10 minute turn, which allowed them to effectively fly a four plane route network with three planes.

This "band together" culture has saved Southwest's skin countless times. It's what has let them run a highly complex route network of mid-market point to points (vs. hub and spoke) with inferior technology, and yet with good service and competitive reliability.

The problem this time around is that Southwest suffers from the same labor shortage as all other airlines in the industry, and it's this labor shortage that led to their other deficiencies from biting them in the ass. Unfortunately, culture can't solve a crisis when there simply aren't enough people to "band together."

Southwest's IT issues are very well known in the industry, and reports are the current CEO and COO understand and aim to address. This week emphasizes the need, and we can expect SW to embark on a modernization plan. Just remember though, IT modernization takes an enormous amount of time. While we wait the better part of a decade for better scheduling and reservation systems (SW's maintenance system modernization is years and years in and is still ongoing,) SW's current CEO can best spend his time in the trenches of the operation preserving and strengthening culture.

Re: Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

#24

Post by theYipster »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #21
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They only just integrated ticketing (with Apollo, SABRE, and Amadeus) in like 2017. Their scheduling (which is the biggest pain point right now) is still done the old-fashioned Herb way Is this why you STILL can’t see Southwest prices and book them on Google Flights, HipMunk, Kayak, etc?

More or less, yes. Proper SABRE integration came last year, and only for businesses. https://skift.com/2021/08/06/southwests-expanded-partnership... Looks like Apollo and Amadeus came in 2020. https://skift.com/2020/05/19/southwest-airlines-expands-corp... https://www.businesstravelnews.com/Distribution/Southwest-Go... So if you use "Kayak for Business" you can book Southwest, otherwise you can click through on the a…

Um, Southwest participates in the IATA clearing house. You put up the wrong list. Here is the right one: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/82a24c7a736142b6bd18e20f7...

And now for some industry education. You can participate without being an IATA member. Southwest likely started when they started flying internationally in 2014. You practically can't be an airline with international flights without participating. IATA runs the global clearinghouse.

Notably, IATA does not run the clearinghouse for US domestic (and for foreign airline tickets purchased in the US.) That's ARC (Airline Reporting Corporation.) Southwest is also a member there.

Re: Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

#25

Post by inferiorhuman »

theYipster wrote: post #23
inferiorhuman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, no Herb built up quite a cult, and he was around on the board of directors until 2008. While Gary is a colossal prick what we're seeing is absolutely Herb's legacy. Southwest had already outgrown its reputation as Herb's scrappy little airline by the 2000s. The meltdown is due, in large part, to practices that worked well enough with 90 jets but don't scale to the largest 737 fleet in the world. That lack of aut…

lol, but then why didn't SW run into this huge mess years ago, or decades ago? It's because while IT and automation matters, it's not the only thing that matters. The most important thing a CEO can do, especially in this industry, is set culture. That's their greatest role. Culture is far more important than IT. Herb's positive legacy in this industry is well deserved. This is because Herb set the culture at Southwes…

  lol, but then why didn't SW run into this huge mess years ago, or decades ago?
They have, like clockwork.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/southwest-airlines-computer-out...

https://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/southwest-airlines-avoi...

  Southwest Airlines flights across the country were held up Wednesday while the airline
  worked to fix technology problems. … Last October, an outage caused about 800 Southwest flights
  to be delayed and forced employees to issue tickets and boarding passes by hand. 

  Southwest is blaming a faulty router, which it says prompted a widespread network system
  failure; a technology crash pegged as the worst in the airline’s history. The reservation
  system was knocked offline, planes were grounded across the nation, and the outage took four
  full days to resolve.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2019/02/22/sou...

  Southwest Airlines suffered a computer outage early Friday
  that temporarily grounded flights across the country, adding
  to a string of recent flight woes at the airline..
https://www.wlrn.org/news/2021-06-15/southwest-airlines-resu...

  A nationwide weather data outage disrupted Southwest
  Airlines flights Monday night, causing long delays for
  some passengers across the country. The company blamed the
  problem on issues with Southwest's third-party weather data
  provider.
As for the 2022 meltdown:

  The problem this time around is that Southwest suffers from
  the same labor shortage as all other airlines in the industry,
  and it's this labor shortage that led to their other
  deficiencies from biting them in the ass. Unfortunately,
  culture can't solve a crisis when there simply aren't
  enough people to "band together."
Nonsense. Arguably Southwest needs more staff because its operations are so archaic, however Southwest had plenty of ramp rats and crew. The problem was Southwest had no idea where its crew actually were or what they were doing. The CEO can't charm their way out of that nor can they simply throw bodies at the problem.

Speaking of culture, the rugged individualism is absolutely a problem but that's still a Herb thing. Up north Sunwing is having massive operational problems but they were willing to charter planes to aid in recovery.

Re: Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

#27

Post by inferiorhuman »

theYipster wrote: post #24
inferiorhuman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less, yes. Proper SABRE integration came last year, and only for businesses. https://skift.com/2021/08/06/southwests-expanded-partnership... Looks like Apollo and Amadeus came in 2020. https://skift.com/2020/05/19/southwest-airlines-expands-corp... https://www.businesstravelnews.com/Distribution/Southwest-Go... So if you use "Kayak for Business" you can book Southwest, otherwise you can click through on the a…

Um, Southwest participates in the IATA clearing house. You put up the wrong list. Here is the right one: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/82a24c7a736142b6bd18e20f7... And now for some industry education. You can participate without being an IATA member. Southwest likely started when they started flying internationally in 2014. You practically can't be an airline with international flights without participating. IAT…

OOf. I did intend to link to the list of IATA members, but I naively assumed that because Southwest does most things in house and does not have any interline agreements that they would also have no reason to be party to a clearinghouse. Of course now that they started pushing reservation stuff to various GDS platforms (beginning in 2020 give or take) they have a use for a common settlement method.

Re: Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

#28

Post by bsuvc »

theYipster wrote: post #23
inferiorhuman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, no Herb built up quite a cult, and he was around on the board of directors until 2008. While Gary is a colossal prick what we're seeing is absolutely Herb's legacy. Southwest had already outgrown its reputation as Herb's scrappy little airline by the 2000s. The meltdown is due, in large part, to practices that worked well enough with 90 jets but don't scale to the largest 737 fleet in the world. That lack of aut…

lol, but then why didn't SW run into this huge mess years ago, or decades ago? It's because while IT and automation matters, it's not the only thing that matters. The most important thing a CEO can do, especially in this industry, is set culture. That's their greatest role. Culture is far more important than IT. Herb's positive legacy in this industry is well deserved. This is because Herb set the culture at Southwes…

> Culture is far more important than IT

Is it though?

I'm not saying culture is unimportant, but IT seems pretty damn important to them right now, given the situation, which culture didn't prevent and won't fix.

Re: Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

#29

Post by jackcviers3 »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #22
vba616 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. If their problem is lack of automation, I wonder why were they reportedly melting down due to the automation failing. Superficially, I'd think that's because they were too dependent on automation. Obviously I don't know how to run Southwest better than Herb Kelleher.

What automation Southwest had still required a lot of manual intervention on a regular basis. E.g. scheduling still required manual intervention if a flight didn't go as planned. Luggage was almost entirely manual process (weight and balance, hand written tags, etc) up until very recently. Now it's a mostly manual process. So on a day to day basis things can be brute forced, but when something like scheduling goes ti…

I imagine someone manually changing the flight manifest by clicking a delete button on each passenger and crew member, and waiting on a database save and gui redraw after each action. Complete with major timeouts and concurrency errors due to the massive spike in traffic caused by the storm.

It would be awful.

Re: Herb Kelleher: Manage in Good Times So You'll Do Well in the Bad Times (2006)

#30

Post by dsfyu404ed »

bsuvc wrote: post #28
theYipster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, but then why didn't SW run into this huge mess years ago, or decades ago? It's because while IT and automation matters, it's not the only thing that matters. The most important thing a CEO can do, especially in this industry, is set culture. That's their greatest role. Culture is far more important than IT. Herb's positive legacy in this industry is well deserved. This is because Herb set the culture at Southwes…

> Culture is far more important than IT Is it though? I'm not saying culture is unimportant, but IT seems pretty damn important to them right now, given the situation, which culture didn't prevent and won't fix.

>Is it though?

Would you rather deal with an organization that's 90th percentile in culture and 10th in IT or the other way around?

Obviously being terrible at either will handicap you but a dearth of good culture will probably cause problems long before a dearth of good IT will. IT has less capability to cover for bad culture and process than good culture and process has to cover for bad IT.

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