Herb Kelleher and Rollin King incorporated Air Southwest in 1967, planning to offer flights only within Texas in order to circumvent federal regulation by the Civil Aeronautics Board which kept prices high and limited service.
Braniff, Trans-Texas and Continental Airlines sued to stop the plan, and Air Southwest didn’t win the right to actually fly until the end of 1970.
At the beginning of 1971 they recruited Lamar Muse to run the airline. Of course at the time it wasn’t yet an airline, it had no assets plenty of unpaid legal bills.
The first task was to generate cash and their plan was to raise $1.25 million in debt financing before even selecting aircraft. And over half of that initial debt — $750,000 — was committed by Wesley West, a Texas rancher, oilman, and friend of former President Lyndon Johnson’s. West joined the airline’s board at its next meeting.
When Lamar Muse met with West on a Friday afternoon to pitch the idea, West immediately took ‘the amount that was left’ in the debenture offering. Muse was to pick up the check at West’s home two days later on Sunday morning. They had breakfast that Sunday morning, and Muse recounts in his autobiography that there were two topics of conversation about the airline.
- The name. West didn’t like Southwest Airlines, he wanted the carrier to be named “Faith Airlines.” The man headed a religious organization and also named his 40,000 acre property “Faith Ranch.” Muse made the point that people shouldn’t need faith to fly the airline, they would be a high quality airline — and safe.
- Their aircraft should have a skylight so passengers could look up towards heaven. West wanted the nascent airline to buy a Boeing 707,
but only if a hole could be cut out of the top of it where they could install a pressurized, clear plastic chamber. It would be big enough for at least two seats that could be hoisted through the opening on some kind of elevator so their occupants could scan Heaven from 40,000 feet up.
Muse told him “that this would be a real engineering challenge and that only Boeing could discuss it intelligently with him.” Muse didn’t say no.
In other words Southwest could have become Judah 1 instead of the largest carrier of domestic passengers of any US airline.
Faith would be an accurate name for almost any current loyalty program.
The skylight idea on a commercial airliner was actually implemented (accidentally). In 1988, Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a 737-200 from Hilo to HNL experienced an explosive decompression and lost the roof of the fuselage between the cockpit and the wing. One flight attendant was lost. The plane managed to land at OGG.
Erm, what about these things could have changed air travel forever?
“Erm, what about these things could have changed air travel forever?”
Mr. Leff can speak for himself. But, if the trajectory of history had merely been starting operations with a B-707, WN likely goes out of business. B-707 would have been more costly to operate. The level of productivity WN managed to achieve with 20 minute turns would not have been achievable.
Also, consider the state of the airline industry at that time. In 1971, the industry had begun to contract ahead of the national economy (which went into recession during the 1973). Additionally, the ’73-’74 Arab Oil Embargo had a profound affect on the cost of a barrel of oil, thus, jet fuel*. (*In Pan Am’s 1974 Annual report, their reported Y-o-Y increase in fuel costs amounted to $200M – or about $1.2B in today’s dollars.)
A non-established, cash poor carrier, operating a B-707 in that environment would not have been a recipe for success.
Lots of history lessons today Gary!
Thanks, they have been interesting!
Are you looking back as the year winds down, you know, in a pensive mood?
@aaway. Not that it matter any more but it was 10 minute turns with 112 pax off and 112 pax on. 10 years later it was 15 minute turns until FAA got involved about the pax standing in the aisle during pushback necessitating 20 minute turns with a “tush in every cush”. By that time there were now 122 seats on the -200.