Summary of Nuts!

Fighting for Life

Southwest Airlines is known as a feisty, creative, lean, but profitable competitor in the difficult business of flying passengers. Its slogan, “The Low Fare Airline,” reflects its origins in the days when flying was a luxury few could afford, and it prides itself still on keeping prices as low as possible. This culture was born with the company. When San Antonio entrepreneur Rollin King approached lawyer Herb Kelleher in 1966 with the idea of creating an airline to fly among Dallas, San Antonio and Houston more cheaply and more comfortably than the existing carriers, Kelleher told Rollin that he was crazy and then said, “Let’s do it!”

In those days, the airline industry was heavily regulated, and Kelleher expected many legal and bureaucratic challenges. However, the battles were fiercer and lasted longer than he could have imagined, as rival airlines launched numerous political and legal actions to stop the new carrier. Even after Southwest started flying in 1971, it still faced challenges about where it flew and which airports it used. This fostered an attitude of tremendous closeness among Southwest employees, and remains a vital and energizing...