Southwest Airlines operates flights to 41 states in the US as well as some international destinations. Its mission is to provide high quality customer service with warmth and friendliness. It aims to be the hometown airline in every community it serves. Tactically, it cuts costs by quick turnarounds, standardized fleets, and smaller airports. It offers no-frills service with only peanuts for in-flight meals. Operationally, it focuses on quick turnarounds, standardized fleets, smaller airports, and no-frills service to reduce costs.

1. LOGISTICS GROUP ASSIGNMENT
Southwest Airlines
1. Territory
Southwest Airlines currently operates flights to 41 states in the United States, the
District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and five near -international
countries including Aruba, Bahamas, Jamaica, Mexico and Puerto Rico.
Figure 1. Southwest Airlines Cargo’s service map
Source: http://www.swacargo.com/swacargo/stationHours.htm

2. 2. Strategy
2.1. Mission
The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of customer
service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company
Spirit.
 To their employees
Their employees are committed to be provided a stable work environment with equal
opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged
for improving the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, employees will be
provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they
are expected to share externally with every Southwest customer.
 To the communities
Southwest Airlines aims at being the hometown airline of every community they serve,
so that those communities will sustain and nurture them with their support and loyalty.
They realize the importance of embracing each community with the Southwest Spirit of
involvement, service, and caring to make those communities better places to live and
work.
 To the planet
Southwest Airlines strive to be a good environmental steward across their system in all
of their hometowns, and one component of their stewardship is efficiency, which, by its
very nature, translates to eliminating waste and conserving resources. They tend to use
cost-effective and environmentally beneficial operating procedures (including facilities
and equipment) to reduce the amount of materials used, when combined with their
ability to reuse and recycle material, preserves these environmental resources.
 To their stakeholders
Southwest Airlines’ vision for a sustainable future is one where there will be a balanc e
in their business model between employees and community, the environment, and their
financial viability. In order to protect the world for future generations and uphold their
commitments to the employees, customers, and other stakeholders, they strive to lead
their industry in innovative efficiency that conserves natural resources, maintains a
creative and innovative workforce, and gives back to the communities in which they live
and work.
2.2. Vision
 “Our vision is to become the world’s most loved, most flown, and most
profitable airline”

3. SWA’s vision clearly state that being a low cost airline does not mean low quality
services, they want to gain customer’s trust and loyalty. They understand that one people
have loyalty rather than hundreds of people do not come back again, they want to be the
world’s most loved.
 “To connect People to what's important in their lives through friendly,
reliable, and low-cost air travel”
They have a desire to develop their scope both domestic and abroad by being the largest
reasonable price airlines. They also want to become a successful company as an
efficiently, low cost carriers in both short and long haul. On the other hand, they define
themselves as an airline with the most productive, friendly and professional workforce
to guarantee the best flight possible for every passenger.
3. Tactical level activities
 Cutting costs and keeping fares low: the primary tactical goal for Southwest Airline.
 Enhance competitiveness of Southwest airline on condition of significant
pressure from other low fare airlines and attract more customers with great
loyalty, position a good image in customers’ insights and raise profits while cut
down expenses.
 The organization cuts costs in its maintenance program by doing more work on
a plane when it is in for a check instead of bringing it in three different times.
 Time: Limiting the turnaround time between flights to 20 minutes, compared to
up to an hour for other airlines.
 Place: Southwest usually flies to less-congested airports, thus saving time and
money by avoiding traffic.
 No dividing classes: There is just one class of seating, doing away with the
distinction between coach and first class. Even the boarding passes are reusable,
made of plastic.
 In flight services: The airline saves by not feeding passengers: it serves mostly
peanuts, no in-flight meals.
 Save cost but still provide transportation services at reasonable quality.
 Improving services quality by making arrival times more reliable.
 “Reliable airline” – trustworthy.
 Erasing old policy as guaranteed seat reservations before ticketing, so that no-shows
will not complicate (and therefore delay) the boarding process.

4.  Passengers paying extra for “business select” fares would be placed at the front
of the line.
 Assuring that turning planes around in exactly 20 minutes, therefore on-time
departures are more apt to produce on-time arrivals.
4. Operating level activities
The company developed operating strategy as a set of strategic decisions centered on
reducing operating costs and offsetting the productivity disadvantages of short -haul,
point-to-point flying.
First, the company focuses on quick aircraft turnaround at the gate, minimizing
the time on the ground, the time when airline’s most costly assets, its planes, are not
utilized. Turning planes around quickly at the gate results in planes being able to log
more hours in the air, increasing their utilization. This strategy, however, has kept them
out of some markets where such a quick turnaround is not possible.
Second, Southwest uses a standardized fleet of Boeing 737 jets, which reduces
maintenance and pilot training expenses. The crews and spare parts are
interchangeable and maintenance cycles more predictable. The single plane type also
makes fueling, cleanup, catering, and ramp operations such as unloading and loading of
baggage and cargo, more efficient and routine, which helps with the quick turnarounds.
Third, when possible, Southwest uses smaller airports with less traffic and
congestion with easy access to large metropolitan areas. They started at Dallas Love
Field Airport, a much shorter drive to down-town compared with American Airlines
dominated DFW. Some other examples are Chicago’s Midway and Houston’s Hobby
airports, which ended up losing carriers to much larger and more modern airports such
as Chicago’s O’Hare and Houston International.
Fourth, Southwest offers “positively outrageous”, but “no frills” customer service.
In particular, in-flight meals are not served, passengers get only peanuts. There is no
baggage transfer to other airlines and the seats are not reserved. This did away with
printing boarding passes, eliminated the time required to process them at the gate, which
allowed for much quicker boarding process, speeding the plane turnaround time.
All these operational strategies required an extremely high level of coordination and
cooperation between various employee groups: pilots, flight attendants, gate operators,
operations managers, ramp managers, baggage transfer and cargo handlers, mechanics,
fuelers, cabin cleaners, and caterers.

5. Group members
Name Student ID
Hoàng Ngọc Mai
Nguyễn Thị Trang
Vũ Phương Thảo
Mai Thu Hiền
Thân Thị Tuyết
Phạm Mai Linh
Nguyễn Thị Thúy
Nguyễn Hà Phương
Phan Hà Phượng Vân
Nguyễn Thị Thu Thảo
Trương Thị Ánh Nguyên
Nguyễn Thị Thu Thảo
Nguyễn Minh Trang
Phí Tiến Đại
1111150074
1111150166
1112150100
1115150050
1114150118
1111150136
1117150087
1111150162
1117150083
1111150029
1111150191
1111150035
1111150134
1111150167