Employees Come first at High-flying Company

Employees come first at high-flying Southwest Airlines
Model contrasts with the Ryanair approach to low-cost aviation

t is widely known in the airline industry that before Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary took over the leadership of Tony Ryan’s sideline business and set about squeezing out costs and driving up performance, he spent time in the USA studying how the original low-cost airline, Southwest, achieved its stellar performance.

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O’Leary himself concedes that many aspects of the model that has made Ryanair such a success story in European aviation – able to challenge such established carriers such as British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and Alitalia in their own backyards – were copied directly from Southwest Airlines. For example, both companies:
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sell tickets directly to the customer, mostly over the internet, cutting out commission to travel agents; price their seats dynamically, charging most at periods of peak demand and almost nothing during less popular periods; abandon the ‘‘frills’’ of flying, such as reserved seats and free meals and drinks on the plane, and turn them into revenue-generating opportunities; forgo revenue opportunities that would disproportionately raise costs; fly point-to-point, and so avoid the complications of ‘‘hub-and-spoke’’ operations; operate only one aircraft type, so that crew and maintenance-staff training is simplified, operational flexibility achieved, and economies of scale created for both aircraft and parts purchasing; avoid large, crowded airports in favor of smaller, cheaper, secondary airports, without problems of congestion; turn aircraft around quickly at their destination, to keep them in the sky (and therefore earning revenue) for more of the day; and offer a single-class cabin, with all passengers receiving the same level of service.

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Main differences between Southwest and Ryanair
There are, however, major differences between the two airlines in the way they...