Originally Posted by
shoelu
Many seem to assert that any problem associated with today's Southwest can be linked to Herbs departure. While I agree he was a visionary CEO with an uncanny ability to think outside of the box, it was a different airline when he stepped down as CEO in 2001.
Many of the changes at SWA can be attributed to nothing more than growth. In 2001 SWA employed 30,000. In 2016 Southwest has more than 52,000 employees. Maintaining any semblance of a "family" feeling becomes progressively more difficult as an airline nearly doubles in size.
Add in the complexity of introducing large congested airports and a limited international route structure and SWA begins to experience some of the maddening delays and problems inherent to a larger and more complex system.
I don't believe SWA has lost that luving feeling but I think most can understand that Southwest will begin to share more issues troubling the legacies as time marches on.
As a current SWA employee, I agree with this statement here the most. It's easy to hate the man at the top and say that he's no Herb. Well, he's not but you can't blame everything on him. The airline has been growing like crazy. I was hired 5 years ago, and there are employee numbers (for the entire company) that are more than 30 thousand higher than mine. It becomes more difficult to manage and our IT and scheduling departments haven't been able to keep up. We're having meltdowns, people are being rerouted on the most ridiculous trips, and our overall trip quality has suffered. We're seeing longer days, more ground time, and shorter overnights.
Contracts. Our ground personnel passed their TA at roughly 51%-49%. The pilots had a decent TA. The flight attendants TA passed at very small percentage with little to no changes. There is an extreme dissatisfaction with the FA union to the point that a recall has been started. There seems to be a big fight going on between the company and unions. Some unions won, some didn't. That could be a cause of some of the grumpiness.
When you are treated like family, are encouraged to have fun, and have a very long leash, you are a happier person. When you are treated more like an employee and have a short leash, you're less likely to be as happy and friendly. Just my observations.
Fly safe,
~ Dan