The Man Who Saved Southwest Airlines with a '10-Minute' Idea
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A true gem, it's very important to make this distinction.
Our application just can't do all the things the client wants in its current state and we have to keep grafting newer tech to it, and we end up with defects like a hydra.
Although, I thought the business parts of the book were excellent, but the mountain climbing anecdotes were absolutely gut wrenching. I actually at times found some of those passages about people freezing to death difficult to read. Others may have found it a bit more entertaining than I did though, and the life lessons about preparation and calculations are applicable to business.
What, in your opinion, makes them "great"?
"From an initial list of 20,400 companies, we sifted through 11 layers of cuts to identify cases that met all our tests (our study era ran through 2002). Only seven did. We labeled our high-performing study cases with the moniker "10X" because they didn't merely get by or just become successful. They truly thrived. Every 10X case beat its industry index by at least 10 times. Consider one 10X case, Southwest Airlines (LUV). Just think of everything that slammed the airline industry from 1972 to 2002: Fuel shocks. Deregulation. Labor strife. Air-traffic controller strikes. Crippling recessions. Interest rate spikes. Hijackings. Bankruptcy after bankruptcy after bankruptcy. And in 2001, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. And yet if you'd invested $10,000 in Southwest Airlines on Dec. 31, 1972 (when it was just a tiny little outfit with three airplanes, barely reaching breakeven and besieged by larger airlines out to kill the fledgling), your $10,000 would have grown to nearly $12 million by the end of 2002, a return 63 times better than the general stock market. These are impressive results by any measure, but they're astonishing when you take into account the roiling storms, destabilizing shocks, and chronic uncertainty of Southwest's environment. Meanwhile, Southwest's direct comparison, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), flailed and was rendered irrelevant, despite having the same business model in the same industry with the same opportunity to become great."
Sounds like a great way to fail spectacularly. If it was impossible, it wasn't going to magically work just because everyone was too afraid to tell him.
I specifically advised my boss not to sell a certain hardware and software combination because it was problematic. In fact eventually the vendor dropped all support. But one of our sales guys got dollar signs in his eyes and sold it anyway to a customer of ours.
Sure enough I was regularly sent out to "do something" to fix it because the systems kept crashing. Finally my boss gave me one of those "if you don't fix it today, don't bother coming back to work tomorrow" ultimatums. What exactly am I supposed to do? Rewrite the network driver for this LAN card myself? That was my last day on the job.
I heard from a friend the company had to rip the entire network out and give a new one free to customer after he threatened to sue. I never did hear if the sales guy had to pay for it.
Yeah - that's not on the salesperson. The basic 'social contract' when someone takes a sales job is that the product the company sells isn't a fraudulently useless piece of crap.
The salesperson didn't design, spec, or build the hardware. He didn't architect or write the drivers, he didn't QA the product, and he damn sure didn't assume the company would sell something that didn't/couldn't work.
Where the hell was your QA manager? Your product manager? Those are the folks that should be responsible for this - not the salesperson.
It is not unambiguous, but I got the impression from this paragraph that the salesperson sold it despite directives to the contrary, which surely is on him or her:
> I specifically advised my boss not to sell a certain hardware and software combination because it was problematic. In fact eventually the vendor dropped all support. But one of our sales guys got dollar signs in his eyes and sold it anyway to a customer of ours.
This was a MicroAge computer store selling equipment in 1985-1987/8 when I was there.
We had no QA beyond burning in kit ourselves before giving to the customer. Everything was simply vendor-supported hardware and software.
In this case it was Novell hardware back when Novell ran on your PC and there was no such thing as a dedicated Novell server. Those came after the hardware I'm talking about.
The software was a point of sale system (the name of which I no longer remember) and had to be network aware. From memory it was so the software could push transactions to another PC.
Anyway when the sales guy approached me and asked if we could sell the system I said no. The vendors had made it clear that the mix of network card and software didn't work and wasn't supported. We learned the hard way when another customer (the guy's brother) started having problems when we expanded his network.
It turned out the network vendor (Gateway?) had upreved their cards and the new ones caused reboots when used with this point of sale software. We had to call the distributor and beg for some older version cards to make the brother's system stable.
So the sales guy hears this explanation and goes to the boss and asks for permission to sell the systems since "We can just request old cards." Boss asks me, I say no because we can't guarantee getting old cards and as stated everyone in my support chain have washed their hands of this combination.
But the customer is price sensitive, it works for his brother and he's saying sell me this or no sale. So the sales guy writes a quote anyway. He knows my boss will feel obligated to honor the quote, and he did, so we sold the system.
In the end the store owner was screwed by his investment partners but that's a story for another day.
Hopefully you understand now why I thought the sales guy should pay for the replacement.
However want to point out that the purpose of a sales organization is to sell. typically a sales organization will sell every and anything to the client. It is normal to sell features that are not implemented, or configurations that are problematic.
1) This is a know-nothing manager who doesn't really know much, but somehow correctly identified the problem and picked the correct number out of the air.
2) He actually understood the market, the competition, and ground operations so well that he was able to correctly identify the problem and realize that 10 minute turnaround was possible.
I've had managers of both kinds. I was technical lead on a software project, and my manager was a PHB who never played with the software, and insisted that a positive, up-beat, can-do attitude could negate the actual facts. Which were that the software was going to be more time to build than he wanted. And then I've had the other kind, who understood the software, and therefore understood how much could reasonably be expected.
It also worked for adoption of webservices for every part of Amazon's business. Basically, Bezos sent out an email to everyone and said that all systems would be compliant, or every employee maintaining that system would be fired. It has to be that way in big companies with major software architecture/infrastructure changes, or everyone will just passive-aggressively make it somehow not happen.
I found this bit particularly interesting, though:
> Today, the task of getting in and out of the gate in 10 minutes is impossible — but back then, says reporter Terry Maxon, the 10-Minute Turn saved the airline.
What makes it so impossible? Airport security has gotten far worse, but that's long before the gate. At the gate, what makes this less possible than it was back then?
Or maybe in those days these regulations did not exist?
This sounds like an unpleasant experience, but I don't see how it's a safety violation. (It's certainly not at all uncommon when flying today to have the boarding lines at least partially formed before the arriving plane touches down.) What did sound unsafe to me was having passengers deplaning and boarding at the same time.
> Passengers were lined up outside before the plane even hit the ground.
(emphasis mine). Someone else mentioned that 'modern-day' boarding is through a climate-controlled jet bridge; that's all I've known, so I didn't consider any other approach.
As commentators have pointed out security at the gate probably has also increased time, I think number of seats per aircraft could also be a contributing factor.
I'm pretty sure unassigned seating has been proven to be the fastest way to load an aircraft in practice.
> what makes this less possible than it was back then?
I'm not sure, I'd guess there are controls in place now that were not in place then e.g. passenger manifest reconciliation for security, ID checks, etc.
Ryanair (European Southwest essentially) target 25 minutes. If there were a way to do if faster I think they'd have found it.
I probably wouldn't change it (the special priorities) given the choice, but it is mildly annoying when it feels like you're waiting in line for an extra 10 or 15 minutes because you're not pregnant, a veteran, a VIP, etc.
If they occasionally let a veteran or pregnant woman in that line who cares?
Either way, like I said, I probably wouldn't change it. It has no real impact on where I sit. It's just the whole making a slow, inconvenient, annoying process just that much slower, more annoying.
I would say they're the European equivalent of Spirit Airlines, or rather Spirit Airlines is the American equivalent of Ryanair.
Southwest is head and shoulders above both those carriers as far as customer experience goes (Two free carry ons (1 overhead item and one personal item), two FREE checked bags, free peanuts/almonds).
Is this really a selling point? A bag of $0.50 nuts to accompany a $500.00 ticket?
And in an industry characterized by extremely low margins a $0.50 bag of peanuts per person is definitely significant money out of their pocket.
The cheapest fare advertised on their homepage is £7.99, London Stansted to Strasbourg (15 August, debit card payment, carry-on luggage only).
A bag of nuts, according to the menu in their FAQ section, is €2.
Still, there's no chance they'll go easier on carry-on and checked baggage: for them, that's about minimising fuel usage and maximising profit.
I would disagree with this. My experience is of low-cost operators in Europe (Ryanair, Easyjet, Wizz etc.), and I believe their experiences have been the opposite. Whilst most of the carriers used to operate on an unassigned seating basis, with fees for reserved seating, now seating is 'randomly' assigned at online check-in (although if possible groups are sat together). You can still pay for reserved seating but the benefit is obviously a lot less now.
My anecdotal evidence is that this has massively quickened the boarding process. Before, there would be delays waiting for people to sort out their seating and luggage arrangements (families especially), now it is much less of an issue and turnaround times are quicker.
It's also possible that the massive increase in people taking only hand-luggage in recent years has been a factor, but I'm not sure.
This is also culture dependent. Nobody boards planes like a group of Japanese. Be that salarymen or high-schoolers on a school trip.
The rest of the world might board in more reasonable time if they got help to stand in line by their seat numbers (better yet, print seatnumber and an integer on the ticket - have people line up at the gate prior to boarding in accordance to the integer).
Would work except for the Scandinavians that'd consider themselves exempt... ;-)
On assigned seating flights, I've noticed plenty of people deliberately sitting in the wrong seat. They know their assigned seat is waiting for them so they might as well try to score a better one. In addition, there are the more reasonable people who find their seat then ask people to switch to be closer to friends etc. This all takes time.
Having to play the seat game is stressful (o hai nonchalant couple straddling the middle seat...), but certainly not as stressful as getting fondled by the blue shirted molesters or wondering if you'll get into an argument with a flight attendant who wants to gate check your electronics-laden carryon.
Whenever I've had to queue way in advance of boarding in order just not to be at the end of my line, I've wished for this sort of solution—but, every time, it seems to me that you'd just run into the trouble where the lower-numbered folks wouldn't all show up on time, and then you'd have to (1) find a way to insert them into the line, which seems like it would have to slow them down, or (2) put them at the back of the line, in which case the whole point of the numbering scheme would be lost and we'd be right back to lines forming long before they need to do so.
So, lets say a plane seat 100, 75 show up on time - seat them automatically when the show up at the gate according to preferences. Those that remain, get what remains when they arrive. Want your seat? Want to sit with your group? Be at the gate 10 minutes before boarding (or however long it takes people to line up).
At times they have taken this to a new low: upselling the benefit of sitting together. The seat assignment algorithm is probably optimizing profit, not retaining groups.
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2014/07/30/airlines-and-parent...
The plane flew at about 20% capacity. That diagram showing all the seats except premium ones filled? Complete and utter bullshit. I got a refund in my email a couple days later; I can only assume due to my complaining to the flight attendant about the situation. And I haven't flown American since.
I wonder why, though. Seems to me like an airplane on the ground is a lot safer to stand in than a fully packed bus in a busy city. Any ideas?
Also, aircraft (and trains) are held to a far greater safety standard. Yesterday's bus crash [1] is unlikely to have much investigation, never mind a change to driving practices, road engineering, law enforcement, or anything else.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/belgium-coach-c...
Belgium has a slightly mad thing that they allow buses full of people without seat belts / standing to travel at 50 mph along the motorways.
I don't think that's specific to Belgium. Even when I was travelling to high school in the UK 8 years ago they would account for standing room when deciding how many buses were required. So you had a bus full of kids all seated and then standing from the front to the back without room to move and the bus going as fast as 60mph. I never really thought of the safety implications but looking back it seems very stupid.
A plane is designed to fly sitting passengers, a city bus is designed to drive standing passengers. A driving plane has very poor suspension - it's bumpy and the bumps are leveraged by the tall landing gears. Inside the plane, people won't just be standing, they will be unpacking the overhead lockers, handing around heavy luggage over people's heads. Busses don't have overhead storage for heavy items, probably for this exact reason.
Now, there's this fight to see how much we can stuff we can cram in for free to avoid checked luggage charges. Everyone has a bag and another bag with a laptop or somesuch. Everyone is trying to fit the biggest bag they possibly can into the overhead. This all costs time.
The weird part is that Southwest accepts checked bags for free, but I still see people doing this. I imagine there's an element of habit here and also a, "Why wait for luggage, I'll just bring everything with me and then go straight to a cab." I know I've fallen for that temptation before, but only after having my luggage lost twice in one year. Now I'm one of those people who often stuffs the largest bag he can find onto the overhead. Losing luggage for just 1 or 2 days on a 3 or 4 day trip really sucks. Suddenly I have no clean clothes, whatever electronics I packed, etc.
I also never understood the fast boarding time gimmick. Sure, its nice, but I usually fly out of O'Hare or Midway, where there's always a long wait after boarding anyway as we wait for an available slot to take off. Usually 20-30 minutes from after doors are sealed. All that rushing was for nothing. I imagine things are better in airports outside of Chicago, NYC, LA, or Atlanta, but for me its a lot of silliness. Especially now that there's this early boarder fee which is just a reinvention of the assigned seating ticket, but crappier because now I'm paying my ticket AND that fee just so I don't sit in the middle seat.
Now that almost all planes board via climate-controlled jet bridges, I presume it's too expensive to use two of them at the same time.
This is more common with but not limited to budget airlines.
Example: https://goo.gl/maps/FvLVB — you can see there are no jet bridges at all at the budget-airline-only LTN.
I'm curious, because, 'don't move around while the plane is moving' sounds like a sensible regulation, but a world without Southwest Airlines would be worse. When is the benefit worth the cost?
Also keep in mind that some airline regulations were much more strict in the 1970s - all routes and fares had to be approved in advance by the Civil Aeronautics Board and competition on price was nonexistent. Southwest was exempt from these regulations because they only operated within Texas.
Southwest flies 737s, which hold around 100 people (says Wikipedia). I can't imagine getting 100 people off a plane and then another 100 back on, plus stowing/unstowing baggage, all in 10 minutes.
Maybe that's why Southwest offers free checked baggage, to reduce the time passengers spend handling carryons.
The "bus" mentality, really worked in TX where the cities are close enough to have a lot of commerce/travel but far enough away that driving can take a considerable amount of time. Flight time between dallas->houston is an hour, driving is 3 hours. The problem is that with full planes, reliably buying a same day ticket is basically impossible. Add in parking/shuttles, security and and all the BS pushes the time in excess of 2 hours. Plus, its hard to guess at weather a few days out, so sometimes you know on the way to the airport that delays/etc are going to cause a flight to take longer than driving.
The 5 minute faster boarding time on SW is no longer a customer service advantage when the customer has been waiting over an hour to board.
All of those things are the result of government control over the airline industry. Security only serves the purpose of keeping people docile to the government (nothing like being porno scanned or molested to let you know whose really in charge!) and the government control allows for limitations on the number of gates, limitation on routes, etc keeping the planes full and capacity down (not enough gates, airports are not kept up to date like thy would if run by an organization that needed to keep its customers happy, etc.)
If the aircraft is flying 1 hour trips, and you can reduce turn time from 20 mins to 10, that means that the whole trip is reduced from 1hr20min to 1hr10min, which works out to a 12.5% shorter trip time for the given route. This means you can either transport 12.5% more people on this route with a given number of aircraft, service 12.5% more equivalent routes with these aircraft, or reduce your fleet size (and marginal costs) by 12.5%.
I gather it can be really bad at peak times.
The whole charade that taking off your shoes somehow makes people safer is insulting.